Radiology Report -- Part II

Well, I saw the oncologist on Thursday, and we went over last week's radiology report that talked about two "new" sets of tumors (the subject of the last update). Well, it turns out that one of those "new" sets of tumors are the lumps on my belly that we've all known about and I'm tracking (using a high-tech measurement approach known as "poking 'em w/ my fingertips").

By the way, and I know this is weird, but hey I'll mention it anyway (butt-hay?). Anyway, our good friends the Higgens visited recently and decided that these tumors in particular needed names. After much debate, they dubbed them "tommy and timmy tumor." I think they're working on an children's book based on these characters (you can imagine the illustrations).

Anyway, these tumors don't appear to be growing. So, that's better news than last week's radiology report would indicate. The other "new" tumors mentioned in the report are between the kidney and pancreas. We did find one of these in the Dr. office on Thursday. It's the biggest tumor I have to date -- about the size of a kiwee fruit (i'm trying to pick creative fruit). I went back and looked at the reports from the scan i had in the hospital, and it turns out that at least one of these two tumors was there back then as well. So, a lot of the "new growth" that the radiology report mentions may not be so "new." (although some of it definitely is... that's the remaining "bad news").

Since every thing else is looking good, we're going to do another 6 weeks w/ the same treatment (all the other tumors are stable; my blood counts are the best ever; my leg feels 100% better; the clot may be breaking up sooner rather than later; i'm able to walk some without the cane; etc.). One encouraging note is that the Dr. I met at NIH who was conducting the study offered to continue to track my case even though I'm no longer eligible to be treated by him under the study. I faxed him the radiology report and he called me (at 7:30 in the evening on his personal time!!) and we went over my status. He said, "I would stay the course and rescan in 6 weeks." That was sweet to get such a consistent second opinion.

In the meantime, we went ahead and planned my upcoming treatment around a trip to Australia (June 19 - July 3) to visit our good friends the Montoya's. This trip has been on the calendar for months and months, and there was a long time when it seemed all but impossible; however, as things stand right now, we hope leave next Friday for Perth. My son looked it up on Google Earth... if you were to go to the Charlottesville airport and ask, "what's the absolute furthest airport on the planet that I can fly to from here, the answer would be "Perth, AU." Oh, and another interesting tidbit... my birthday is June 20, but we have to cross the international date line to get to AU, so it looks like I'll get about 4 hrs of b'day in from Midnight until 4am or so on Saturday and then, all of a sudden, it will be the 21st. What a rip off!! I'm going to talk to the flight attendants and see what they can do to help me pack 24 hrs of birthday celebration into those measly 4 hrs.

One quick story about how connected we are without even knowing it: Yesterday, Joanne was at the grocery store. The guy who bags the groceries (I don't even know him) says, "how's your husband?" Joanne gave a quick update. Then he said, "I pray for him every day. Tell him to keep fighting. If there's anything -- and i mean it -- anything -- I can do for you please , please ask." It made me cry.

Well, that's enough for now. More to come soon... i have some fun pics of recent activities that I need to post. Hopefully they'll show up later this weekend.