[Ghoulish Delight]

My sister's biopsy came back negative.

I haven't posted this here, or talked about it with more than a couple people, but late last year my sister was diagnosed with cancer. A melanoma on her back that had made it into her lymph system. It had spread from a node on her back down to an adjoining node. The dr. who gave her the initial diagnosis gave her low odds of surviving even 10 years.

The oncologist she was referred to had a far less doom-and-gloom story for her and went straight to work on treatment.

She's been through a total of 3 surgeries where they removed the melanoma, the first node it had spread to, the two nodes "up and downstream" from that one (biopsy showing that the cancer had spread to the "downstream" one), and then the two nodes connected to that one. Tonight she got the biopsy results on the last node removed, and she's cancer free.

She's got quite a bit of recovery from some extensive surgery, and there remains risk of recurrence, but she's being treated by the guy who literally invented the methods for diagnosing and treating this form of cancer, so she's in good hands.

May 2010 (and beyond) continue to get better from here.