Post Cancer Treatment PET scan and follow-up scare.

I'm a 47-year old male that was diagnosed with SCC BOT HPV+ with neck lymph-node involvement back in June of 2017. Other than the cancer diagnosis I was in excellent health. No prescriptions, no ailments and live an active lifestyle.

I completed my treatment in Sept. of 2017. Treatment consisted of 35 daily radiation treatments and three large doses of Cisplatin chemo. I handled the treatment very well considering how brutal it is. No PEG tube and no chemo port. I lost about 30+ pounds (but I had put extra weight on in preparation for treatment). I never threw-up and other than a couple of weeks, I was still fairly active and continued to work and maintain our property. I also never lost my taste buds but I did loose some saliva (getting better each week) and I did suffer from nasty mucous and neuropathy in my legs - which alleviated with increased exercise.

Things were looking great going into my first post treatment PET scan. 

I did my PET scan on Dec. 19. I thought something might be up when they didn't schedule me for an appointment with my oncologist (to review the scan) until after the Christmas and New Year's holidays and as the last appointment of the day - even though I had called and specifically said I didn't want to go through the holidays not knowing the results. 

When my oncologist walked in the room you could tell by her face this would not be good. She literally started the appointment off by telling me "I'm sorry, the PET scan did not turn out like we had hoped." She followed that up by explaining the treatment appeared to have been successful on my throat and all but one neck lymph node, but that "you have a lot of disease in your chest now." The PET scan seemed to show a large mass in my lung and multiple 20-30+ lymph nodes. The oncologist concluded that most likely, just prior to treatment, my SCC BOT metastasized and began moving radically to my chest and lung area.

The oncologist explained that the PET scan lights up with cancer AND signs of large infection. However, since I exhibited no symptoms of being sick, having pneumonia or suffering from asthma that it was most likely cancer and that it "was really bad." So bad in fact that it was most likely not curable but hopefully treatable to slow it's growth. My oncologist said a CT scan would need to be conducted to verify the PET scan and to rule out any infection and to give a thoracic team a clearer plan of action.

Naturally, we were devastated. 

My wife literally collapsed on the floor in tears in the doctor's office.

I've never cried or gotten emotionally upset over my cancer diagnosis and I didn't get emotional over this recent bad news. But, I was still overcome with shock and for the next 13 days we lived under the cloud that my number was most likely up and that more treatment was in my future and that future didn't look great. 

Close friends and family obviously asked about my PET scan results and we had to share the bad news. We even called MD Anderson and scheduled an appointment to get a second opinion.

Just yesterday we met with the thoracic surgeon to go over a CT scan I had done last Friday.

To our surprise, the news was excellent. As the thoracic surgeon said, "I don't often get to give good news."

Apparently I was suffering from walking pneumonia or similar severe infection when the PET scan was conducted, but i showed no signs of the infection. All of the enlarged lymph nodes in my chest had returned to normal size and the suspect 'tumor' had shrunk by almost 40% in the course of almost a month. Like the thoracic surgeon said, "the findings on this new scan are all GREAT!"

I'm not a religious person, but I am a person of faith. I also have a lot of friends and family that deeply rely on the power of prayer. I don't know what caused this devastating news to be completely reversed, but I'm thankful.

I also wanted this story to help give others hope that your path is not set in stone and that great things can happen at any moment.

UPDATE: I added a video - actually mostly just audio from my two doctor's appointments. The lesson here, don't totally freak if you get a negative PET scan result. It may actually not be bad news. Click to see video (youtube).