Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles.

So, it turns out that the woman doing my ultrasound scan today is the same woman who did my first ultrasound scan back in December. I don't remember her and she doesn't remember me, but her initials are on that first scan. Before she starts today's ultrasound, she scrolls through the past scans on a computer screen to get an idea of what to look for now. 

I avert my eyes, as I am a coward and afraid of what I will see, even if it's good news.

She starts working the ultrasound machine, but pauses a moment and then stops. She goes back to the computer and pulls up the original scans from December once more. From my vantage point, I see her scrolling through scan after scan until she stops on one and leaves it there on the computer screen. This time, I look - I can't help it, I'm curious. 

The long, black terror of a tumor stares back at me like a glowering menace. It's like looking into the eye of Sauron.

She returns to the ultrasound machine, this time with a ruler. She gets the exact measurement on my breast of where to look and tries again. The plastic stick kneading my flesh. The warm, gooey gel spreading across my skin. I can't bear having anything on my skin, including lotion, so this process makes me squirm a little. I try to focus on the ceiling to calm my nerves. 

"Oh, my God. I don't believe it." She shakes her head.

I jerk in response. "What? Do you see anything?"

There's a long pause. A deep breath. And then:

"No. There's nothing there."

I peer over my shoulder at the ultrasound screen. 

"Well, what's that?"

"That's the clip from your biopsy. But that's it. Just the clip."

When I had the biopsy of the primary tumor in my breast, they inserted a little clip in afterward as a marker to keep track of where they took the sample tissue. Before my first cycle of chemo in January, my oncologist had said that the goal would be to shrink the tumor so small that it disappears completely and only the clip would be left when viewing scans of my final ultrasound. Though, he added, the likelihood of that would be very slim, about 5%. Improbable, but a good goal nonetheless.

"So, that right there. That is just the clip? There's nothing else?"

"I mean... No."

"Oh. Wow."

It looks so clean, so new, so healthy. I'm stunned.

"Have you... have you ever seen anything like this before?"

"I have never seen anything like this before in my life. It's a miracle."

She leaves the room to go get the radiologist on call. Alone in the room, I am shaking. There are tears in my eyes but I don't even register that I'm crying, more like my eyes are in shock and are trying to make sense of things. My whole body thrums with dull energy as I keep staring at the stilled images on the screen.

It's a miracle. It's a miracle. It's a miracle.

She returns with the radiologist, who scrolls through the images and is explaining the scan to me. There is no indication that a tumor was ever there. No residual tissue, no scar tissue, nothing. Only the biopsy clip. I hear him but it's so hard to listen when my blood is rapidly pounding in my ears. 

As he leaves, we shake hands and he says, "Congratulations." In that one word I see my life, my future, unfurling out of the sky like little shooting stars (or meteors if you want to get technical) and coming back to me. I welcome it all. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles.

I believe in you my soul.

One thousand cranes.

Legend has it that if a person makes one thousand paper cranes, he or she is granted a wish (more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_origami_cranes).  Like many people my age, I first heard about this legend through the story of Sadako Sasaki - the young Japanese girl diagnosed with leukemia (she was exposed to radiation when the Hiroshima atomic bomb exploded) who attempted to fold a thousand cranes to fulfill her wish of recovery. Though she did not succeed in finishing that goal before her untimely death, the tradition of folding cranes for cancer patients has remained something of a pop culture phenomenon.

Which is why I decided to embark on such a task, once diagnosed with cancer myself. The superstitious part of me was convinced that if I could fold a thousand origami cranes, then my wish for a cure would surely come true. It was that simple! I started folding right away. People offered to help, but I refused, rationalizing that my wish would be stronger, more potent, if I did all of the work myself. I figured I could fold a certain number of cranes a day and have it done in two weeks, a month tops.

(I think you can see where I'm going with this...)

Yet, four months and five chemo sessions later, I found myself staring at the box of unfolded paper. The small percentage of finished cranes just stared back at me with silent judgement. I considered all of the times when I could have folded cranes and didn't. How quickly projects are so easily tossed aside in favor of excuses and reasons why not. This is typical behavior for me. I go through phases - I like to start a ton of personal side projects all at once, which eventually tend to fizzle out as I grow increasingly bored with each of them. Honestly, I'm surprised this blog has lasted as long as it has.

At first, I folded large cranes (6x6 paper) but then I realized the final product would be too large of a scale, so I dropped that and started folding smaller cranes (3x3 paper). I took random paper and folded cranes haphazardly, but then I realized I wanted there to be some kind of pattern with the colors and design of paper. So, I scrapped those cranes and started all over again, this time first counting out the different kinds of paper and organizing them by color, pattern, etc. It took forever, but I finally had a system in place. I split the thousand sheets of paper into ten groups of one hundred each and got to work. But then I was too exhausted to do the actual folding!

By this point, there was a slight hiccup in my treatment, which resulted in my having to do several mid-treatment scans. I won't go into details, because there's no point in causing unnecessary worry, but suffice it to say that this new, unexpected wrinkle was not what I had expected. It was more than just extreme fatigue and stiff joints and low white blood cell counts. There was a huge disparity between the results of my first cycle and my fourth - where my doctor was hugely impressed and optimistic before, now he was flummoxed and a little unsure. And if a decision wasn't made soon, then, well...

Let's just say it might not bode well for my future.

And so, due to my aforementioned superstitious nature, I looked to the cranes again for help. Only this time, I wasn't going to give up on them or myself so easily. On a selfish level, I needed this cancer wish to be granted, but as we all know wishes aren't free. Nothing is free, everything has a cost. But a thousand folded paper cranes in exchange for life doesn't really seem like a bad deal, when you think about it. It seems almost silly to put my hope in that, but people have put hope in all sorts of things to help them get through difficult times. Rather there be a little hope then no hope at all.

In that week I folded seven hundred paper cranes, with only three hundred (about a third) left to go. My fingers were stiff and raw and calloused and covered in tiny paper cuts. I was exhausted, but I still planned to finish the rest. And, the thing is, it wasn't about folding the cranes themselves - that part is arbitrary. It's about setting a goal and achieving it no matter the obstacles and whatever the outcome. I mean, has there ever been a sense of accomplishment in an unmet goal?

As my scheduled treatment draws to a close, I still need to have a PET scan, the results of which would determine whether or not I could stop the chemotherapy. My insurance company had denied the PET scan five times already, but I was determined to have it approved this time around. I started by folding two hundred paper cranes. My husband and I also contacted my oncologist's office to send my past scans and reports to the insurance company; the human resources dept at my job contacted the insurance company on my behalf; and my supervisors even contacted high-level administrators at my job to get some kind of result.

In the meantime, I had CT and full-body bone scans scheduled just in case the PET scan was denied again - I needed SOME kind of scan result if I was going to try to avoid yet another cycle of chemo on Monday (6/15). The CT/bone scans were scheduled for Friday, yesterday, and that morning before heading to the hospital, I sat and finished the final one hundred cranes. I had just folded my last crane, number one thousand, when I received a phone call from the HR representative at my job: after six months of waiting and multiple denials, my PET scan had finally been approved.

This was the moment for which I had been waiting, and even my superstitious nature couldn't believe that it all happened the moment I finished my goal of folding one thousand paper cranes!

Just to be on the safe side, I poured all of the tiny cranes onto the floor and counted them out, one by one. By the time I had finished counting them all - all one thousand cranes - the CT/bone scans were canceled for that day and PET scan was scheduled for 6/22, so that means I will have to undergo one last cycle of chemo on Monday. But even though I am not looking forward to more chemo, I am willing to do that if it means I might never have to do it again.

The moral of today's story: You can do anything you put your mind to, as long as you buckle down and just do it. Also, I am superstitious. Also also, miracles won't happen if you sit around and wait for them to appear - true miracles come from persistence, dedication, hard work. And maybe a little luck, too.