Good scan, good news

Im only really a lurker here but in view of the waves of bad news that have been coming lately I thought id post the story of my recent scan that Ive posted elsewhere here too. I know that I, as a newbie, desperately searched for positive examples and at the moment my story is positive so perhaps it will beuseful to someone.

I had my progress check-up CT scan yesterday. Just to recap, I have had two months of Folfox and two blasts of Avastin following Dx in 2011, initial surgery and treatment for stage III and almost immediate (Dx after three months) progression to the liver.

When the radiologist called us into his room he was looking a bit grim and started waffling on about significantly enlarged lymph nodes, it was heart in boots time until we realised he was talking about todays scan compared to the scan he had done a year ago - We already knew there were lymph nodes enlarged from the PET ten weeks ago that showed up the progression, which was done in another lab and which this radiologist clearly hadnt seen.

"What about the liver?" We asked. "What ABOUT the liver?" Was his response. Well, thats why we are here, to see if the chemo has worked on the liver mets, which according to the PET report were "multiple mets in all segments and areas of the liver".

"I can't see any mets" he said.

Ah. Could you see them if they were there? Yes. And you cant? No.

We gave him the CD with the recent PET scan and after about 20 mins he called us into his office and pulled up all three CTs we have of the liver. On the one corresponding to the PET there are very clearly 5 or 6 obvious mets that are now gone. Zapped. Nuked. Vanished.

To cut a long story short the ultrasound confirmed that I basically have no more mets in the liver. The CT can see one and the ultrasound two or three areas of tissue that are clearly changed and may be the sites of mets but do not appear to be active mets. We arent doing the happy dance yet because I still have two or three seriously enlarged LNs to deal with, but compared to the PET scan they have also shrunk significantly (visually 30-50%) so we are allowing ourselves a couple of grim smiles.

Bottom line is that Folfox+Avastin is kicking serious cancerous butt.

We are going to head into a third month of chemo (I havent had any serious issues with it yet) and on the 4th Dec Im talking to some liver surgeons to see what they may or may not want to cut out but for the moment things are going in absolutely the right direction.