Meagan and I want to have a threesome with NED.
NED as in No Evidence of Disease. There are lots of terms referring to one's status with respect to cancer. Cancer free, cancer in remission, currently under treatment but stable, and then of course, "I have cancer". With melanoma, there is probably little prospect of ever being declared cancer free. Its characteristics - capricious, prone to sudden outbursts after laying dormant, the lack of therapies that convincingly eradicate it or durably eradicate it, its immune system connection - mean that what one might hope for optimistically is to get rid of all evidence of it through surgery, shrinkage and disappearance of tumors through whatever biological therapy you are on.
We've got to set ourselves up as having a chronic, long term disease, but one in which there is no evidence of disease for a long long time. And hope that maybe the last therapy really did the job and it truly is gone. Then we need to scientific community to continue to move forward and truly find a cure.
So we want our threesome with Mel to be over. We are a nice couple, we'd have a great threesome with NED.
NED as in No Evidence of Disease. There are lots of terms referring to one's status with respect to cancer. Cancer free, cancer in remission, currently under treatment but stable, and then of course, "I have cancer". With melanoma, there is probably little prospect of ever being declared cancer free. Its characteristics - capricious, prone to sudden outbursts after laying dormant, the lack of therapies that convincingly eradicate it or durably eradicate it, its immune system connection - mean that what one might hope for optimistically is to get rid of all evidence of it through surgery, shrinkage and disappearance of tumors through whatever biological therapy you are on.
We've got to set ourselves up as having a chronic, long term disease, but one in which there is no evidence of disease for a long long time. And hope that maybe the last therapy really did the job and it truly is gone. Then we need to scientific community to continue to move forward and truly find a cure.
So we want our threesome with Mel to be over. We are a nice couple, we'd have a great threesome with NED.
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