This week has been bittersweet… definitely more sweet, than bitter.

For those of you that follow Dear Melanoma on social media, you would know that I FINALLY started the clinical trial that I have been speaking about for months! After such a rollercoaster of feelings and having the trial almost taken away from me because of issues collecting viable tissue, on Tuesday I was able to breathe easy. I was in the treatment chair ready and raring to go. It was not difficult to see my excitement, but was super special seeing the relief and complete joy felt by my oncologist, the clinical trial’s team, the nurses, the receptionists and all of YOU!

I definitely had a whole lot of people praying to the Pavlova Gods for this trial.

A quick update...

Last week I shared the news that my latest CT scan wasn’t great. A lesion on my adrenal gland had grown and there appeared to be activity in my lymph nodes.

It is really difficult to explain the emotions that were triggered by this scan. On one hand, I felt silly that I was so upset by these results because the big picture was not that bad – everything else was stable, which is great! But, this one naughty little lesion had the potential to change the direction of my treatment, a treatment that essentially bought me back from death’s door.

It feels like a lifetime ago that I was given three months to live and being told that my only hope of more time would be gaining access to a clinical trial of the drug Keytruda and hope that it would work.