Current status

While I touted October 4^th as a big day due to the CT scan I apologize once again for leaving you all hanging here with no idea how that turned out.

I guess the keyword following the CT scan is “ambiguous”.  The idea of ongoing scans is to compare each one to the one before so that changes of any kind can be flagged and analyzed accordingly.  Unfortunately a CT scan is not an apples-to-apples comparison with a  PET scan.  Of course as a standalone test the CT scan gave us information but Dr. Richards had to press the radiologist to stretch a bit to try and make even basic comparisons.  This fuzzy compare indicates that the liver tumors are roughly the same, or slightly larger, and the CT also spoke again about activity in my T9 spine. 

For now we are continuing with the VP-16 based chemo and Dr. Richards suggested that we get another opinion from Sloan-Kettering.  I sent MSKCC the CT scan as well as the disks from the octreotide scan I had in late July.  We have an appointment with Dr. Janjigian on Thursday, October 25^th.  I continue to juggle the pain meds to get decent sleep and so that I can function during the day.

Stay tuned!

Big day

Although our attempt to schedule a PET/CT scan failed I have a regular CT scan scheduled for this afternoon.  I had read that some insurance carriers are difficult with regard to PET/CT scans and it turns out that our new carrier falls into that category.  Nevertheless, this will be a big day as the CT will tell us most of what we need to know.  Most important is the question that after 4 rounds of chemo treatments (12 days) on the new protocol are we getting a positive result?

I'm also in a fair amount of pain/discomfort so hopefully the CT will shed some light on that as well.

Clearly this is a big day and I thought that I'd let you know that I'm bringing you along for the ride.  I'll post the results as soon as I get them.