The Radiation Oncologist was awesome – first of all he
pulled up the PET/CT scan and walked us through it on the computer; it was
really cool to see from a tech perspective (a 3-D model of my body), but the
best part was that there was literally no cancer anywhere except for the one
big tumor that we know of. The little lumps
around it didn’t even show up as cancer, which means either that they’re not,
but still need to be removed, or that they are but were maybe too small to be
picked up by the PET scan? We only think
they’re cancer because the cells they got from the biopsies there seem to match
the other big tumor, but there wasn’t proof from the biopsy that they were
cancer since they didn’t get a full sample of the little ones. So the great news is that – if when they do the
surgery and test the little lumps they find that they aren’t cancer, and if
they don’t find any cancer in my lymphnodes (or at least not in more than 3 of
them) then I don’t need radiation! We’ll
find out after surgery, but I’ll at least keep my hopes up. If I do need radiation, it’ll be 6 weeks of
daily visits and will likely make me pretty tired, but still functional. The radiation oncologist also said that I
could possibly have reconstructive surgery before radiation depending on which
kind I get, which is backwards from what everyone else has said, but he
actually would prefer for have my chest wall separated from my lungs so that
there’s less chance of radiating them.
And that sounds like a bonus to me too.
Separately, he gave us a few recommendations for plastic
surgeons, and included some color commentary on one of them who is apparently
known for being super arrogant and lacking social skills. But as the rad oncologist
said, I’ll be asleep when I’m hanging out with him, so I shouldn’t worry about
that. We ended by telling him that we
really liked him a lot and hoped we never saw him again J. Keep
your fingers crossed on this one.
Next was the Chemo Oncologist, who laid out the approximate
roadmap he’d see for the next year:
- Last week of August: VACATION! J We’re still waiting on final confirmation of this, but are hoping that we can still go
- 1st week of Sept: Surgery. I’d take a week or two off at this time for recovery.
- Late Sept– Late November: 1st set of Chemo drugs; I’d go in every 2 weeks for 8 weeks total, each time will take about 2.5 hours of infusions. Each time I’d have to have shots to stimulate my white blood cell count to let us keep going every 2 weeks (boo)
- Late November – Jan: 2nd set of Chemo drugs; I’d go in every 1 week for 8 weeks total, each time will take about 2.5 hours of infusions
- Late November – Late November 2014: Simultaneously with the second set of Chemo drugs, I’d start going in for an antibody infusion every 3 weeks for a year, each time will take 30 minutes. However unlike Chemo, this isn’t toxic so I should be able to handle it okay.
- Feb 2013 – Either start radiation, or reconstructive surgery, or both depending on the outcome of the surgery.
- (Maybe) August 2013: Reconstructive surgery if I don’t do this before radiation.
It’s not a pretty flowchart, but it’s really helpful to
know. And it might change if I go with
Swedish instead; I’ll find out more this afternoon. It’s hard to predict how sick I’ll be with
the chemo or radiation; they have a lot of drugs to help with that but given
that anesthesia makes me super ill, it’s likely I will have some challenges. I will definitely lose my hair, and maybe my
eyebrows and fingernails – fun! – but they will grow back.
I will need company during my infusions though; get ready to
sign up for sessions of entertaining me J
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