Rogier’s Road to Recovery

Tuesday, May 17 2005

Dear Friends around the Globe,

– Surprise Party –
What a surprise-party it was!! I was absolutely overwhelmed. It was the best party in my life with the best reason for it ever.

A month ago five fantastic friends – Clemens, Died, Sanne, Evelien and Matthijs – threw a HUGE surprise-party for me to mark the end of my treatment for cancer! It was absolutely smashing and a total surprise to me! Close to 100 friends and family gathered in ‘De Poort van Leyden’ on Saturday while Sanne lured me in with a couple of lies…

After you all shocked me, Sanne and Died gave very moving speeches on the months of my chemotherapy/radiotherapy-treatment and how we all managed to get through this. I was honored with so many of you present at this party and your compliments on my attitude. See my website http://www.van-willigen.net for a lot of pictures of this party!

And there was more to come!
- Tasho, my roommate from Princeton, gave an impressive speech through a ’semi-live’ webcam-conversation, which was shown on a big screen. Unfortunately there was a glitch in the recording when he discussed undergraduate girls
- My mother sculpted this stunningly beautiful bull for me. It is very special to be given such a present. My mother argued it symbolizes the strength I showed during the treatment, my ‘connection’ with New York (you can find a huge bull in the financial district) and… my pre-treatment fertility! You might remember about the sperm-donations I wrote about in my first recovery email. Well, I only found out on that party that my parents and brother are calling me ‘Herman’ behind my back for months now! Herman is the name of the first Dutch transgene bull who has over 50 descendants…
- Henning, a friend who I met at Princeton, came over for this surprise-party with his girlfriend Soni! They came all the way from Hamburg and Muenster. Really cool that they went to such lengths to join in!
- My aunt Helma and uncle Danny from the US gave me a call to congratulate me and sent in a power-point presentation created by my cousin Michelle with pictures of Chris, Tracey and beautiful Emma as well!
- Chuck, Tuan, Gennady, Jyotishman and colleagues from the photosynthesis-research group at Princeton sent a really big and very beautiful bouquet of flowers, a photo-postcard AND a powerpoint-presentation on my time at Princeton! Although not everyone got all the photosynthesis-steps right, everyone had a big laugh and got to see nice views of Princeton !
- My cousin Patricia and Morris sent in a Power-point presentation and showed us some beautiful pictures of Aberdeen (and its nice weather…). They had sound reasons for not being with us : just recently Patricia gave birth to Thomasina! Welcome to the family, Thomasina!

KWF Kankerbestrijding
Clemens, Died, Sanne, Evelien and Matthijs put up a big box where people could make donations to the Dutch Cancer Foundation (KWF Kankerbestrijding). Even though most friends present were “poor” university students, there was donated some eur 300,-! I decided to double this to eur 600,-. A local administrator of the KWF Kankerbestrijding was very happy to hear our donation and thanked me enormously! I suggested that it was me who has to thank the Dutch Cancer Foundation – and not the other way around.

I also have to thank my cousin Raymond for making a movie of the party (which my brother is working on to convert to dvd-format), my parents for making pictures and delicious snacks (I speak for all of us on that one) and Linda and Leung for their constant work on serving drinks (I speak for all of us on that one, too!). Furthermore I’d like to thank the dj’s – or better: performers – of De Pilo’s for their spectacular shows during the evening and the restaurant De Poort van Leyden for hosting our party. The organizing committee Clemens, Died, Sanne, Evelien and Matthijs can’t be thanked enough. This was all so impressive.

– CT-Scan –
Things are going well now. Two weeks ago I received the results of my latest CT-scan and these results are good. The size of the tumor has diminished enormously due to the chemotherapy. The radiotherapy is meant to kill the last cancer-cells. A quite measurable size of scar tissue remains on the location of the original tumor, but Hodgkin is known for that and that poses no problem at all. I have regular appointments with my doctors at the LUMC.

Technical details.
The tumor has been reduced enormously during the course of my treatment. Keeping in mind tumors don’t grow in geometrical shapes, the original pre-treatment dimensions were estimated at some 16 cm by 13 cm by 13 cm. Really huge. The small tumor in near my neck was removed surgically for diagnosis (only 3 cm in its longest dimension or so).
After three months of chemotherapy the dimensions were reduced to some 10 cm by 8.5 cm by 6.5 cm. In volume this is approximately a five-fold reduction.
After another 6 months of chemotherapy this has been reduced to “something” by 6.5 cm by 4 cm (the first dimension isn’t measured exactly). This is approximately a 14-fold reduction compared to the original size.
The radiotherapy has had no big effect on the size of this tissue, as was expected by my radiotherapist. Certainly the radiotherapy has had its effect on the last cancer-cells, but the effect of radiotherapy on the size of the remaining scar tissue is negligible.
Hodgkin is known for leaving sizeable amounts of scar tissue on the location of the tumor. This scar tissue is really comparable to scar tissue which develops on your skin if you have a wound. The scar tissue will remain and diminish very slowly over time. During the first years I will be checked often to make sure that the size of this tissue doesn’t increase. As I informed you in earlier emails, chances are deeply in favor of my full recovery.

– Holidays –
During the coming summer I’ll be spending a lot of time abroad! I was looking strongly forward to traveling during my treatment.
I hope to fly to the US in two weeks to meet up with my family, friends and former research-group colleagues at Princeton (I have to inform everyone yet…). I was more or less ‘deported’ after my diagnosis and it would be nice to see each other again in a normal setting.
Afterwards, Michelle – a friend of the 1903 building at Princeton – will travel to the Netherlands (!) and there are ideas to travel together to Germany to meet up with other Princetonians for a 1903-reunion.
Furthermore, I’ll be traveling to Istanbul with 5 friends for three weeks in July and with Sanne to the West-coast of the US for another four weeks.

Party on!

Love, Rogier

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 17th, 2005 at 9:13 pm and is filed under Cancer, Recovery-emails. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.