"Is the 3rd Time the Charm?" – Only The Shadow Knows…

Well, I just wrapped up my 3rd scan cycle from last year’s fight…I’m 9-months out of my last treatment now…sitting back in the blood labs and in the infusion department, it seems just like yesterday’s nightmare…crowded waiting rooms, standing room only…new folks coming over the hill and into the cancer system quicker than we can find chairs for them all…

Such is the business of cancer…

My hospital is ‘tech savvy’ and they have a system in place where you can exchange emails (like a PM), make appts online and view your test results online as well. I had requested my latest CT report and went over it prior to yesterday’s visit.

I’m fairly adept at interpreting the results, and new terminology and phrasing that I come across, I get myself educated and up to speed quickly. The guy that wrote this one was very good and thorough. What was fascinating was that the scans picked up a problem I experienced in childhood….a trauma that had occurred when I was just a boy. Only it was never reported before. Each person writes up their own summaries, but this guy was thorough.

I found it very interesting at what the CT actually sees…it’s not all about tumors as it turns out. The CT has eyes we didn’t even know it had…it sees the past – as well as the future.

So, overall things look pretty stable. As always, there are a couple of potential minefields to be wary of. I’ve got a 6mm hypodense foci of ground glass NOW in the LEFT lung (the good one)…the status is “too small to characterize.” So, we’re watching this closely.

We’re still watching the 1cm lung nodule in my right lung….where all of the surgery and radiation took place….it showed up on the 1st scan following all of that carnage and still presents today…stable and we’re watching it. How in the world could anything live through that surgery and radiation?

I don’t get that…5 more wedge resections and pulling out 2 ribs and blasting it with 30 rounds of IMRT radiation should have nuked even the cockroaches…I’m sure not breathing the same after all of it…CT results says “noticeable loss of volume.”

Just ask anybody in Chicago…I couldn’t keep up with the group…on my next trip somewhere, I’m joining the Hoveround Tour Group, where I can power chair my way around the city:)

I’ve got confirmation of 2 hernias now – inguinal and umbiblical…they are small and no surgery is recommended at this time…but they hurt and are a tad painful, especially when trying to raise up from a prone position…like out of bed, or off one of the flat scanner tables.

And the latest thing that has got my attention…there is a new 6mm spot along the medial margin of the portal venous system (liver)….again, currently too small to characterize….we are again watching this. This is a little disheartening as I’ve been clear in the liver for FOUR years.

I’m not eligible for a liver resection…the last attempt failed as my liver was deemed unable to sustain my life and had they taken 80% as planned…I would have died in the O/R, according to my world renowned surgeon at Baylor….so they switched to RFA which was successful….and has done me well.

So, if it is something…it would have to be RFA or a chemical intervention. And you know the problem with our tumors, is that it is akin to spinning the slots at the casino….only we hope that when the tumor does land, it falls in a place that some type of surgical intervention can occur…..

I’ll just have to wait and see…

My next scan cycle will put me at a year mark post treatment. For those that were here then, I had written a post titled, “The Chemo Wars – What’s the Real Story.” In there, I said that if I invested a year into the fight, that I expected to get my year back out of it OR “I Was Slipping…”

So, next scan cycle will be interesting…I’ve never gone longer than 12-18 months without something showing up that we watched – and then had to act on…and that was at the very beginning of the journey.

Since then, recurrence has come quicker and quicker…usually a couple of months or less…and then we watch and wait till it gets bigger and then go after it. It seems that recurrence begets recurrence, at least for me. As I’ve said before, we should all expect to have at least one recurrence in our fights.

But, it becomes a different mindset once you begin to experience MULTIPLE recurrences and in fairly short order. You can’t get it out of your head…at least not for too long….

So, we watch and wait…and hope that these spots, new and old, remain stable for the foreseeable future…the next scan should be filled with much heralded anticipation and apprehension.

I wasn’t going to post with all the stuff we’ve got going here…but since we’re all taking notes and examining one another’s cases, I thought it was good fodder with that regard.

As Walter Cronkite used to tell us, "And that's the way it was..."

-Craig