Evening!
I had the PET scan done Mon the 19th. Today I recieved the report and results. Quite a mixed bag, but, the good news was that my cancer has not spread beyond my chest cavity. The bad news is the largest of my tumors in my chest (the one that is attacking my heart, veins and vessels) has nearly doubled in size. Some more good news, the others have grown but not by as much.
I will still keep the Doc appointment at the Boston VA hospital on the 3rd of Nov. My last hope for surgery, but the top dog in my neck of the woods says, there's no way to cut the cancer away from my heart and he has never known the other Doc to do surgery after the first says he won't operate. But, I'm still going to play this hand to the last raise or fold. Within a few days of that hurdle, if sugery is out, I will be starting radiation treatment. The good news there is it looks like I have a very good chance for those treatments to be done locally as I had hoped for. Still hopeing that will be the case. Today, I have taken the first step of excepting the fact that I am in pain, I filled an order for some pain pills. At this time I plan to only take at bedtime in hopes that I might sleep a bit better and longer. I was a little reluctant but that's when the Doc said if I was his father, he'd put a couple pills in my coffee. That's when I saw how young the Doc was and realized how old I must look to him. I had a good laugh at that. LOL
My wife is having a bit of a hard time with this, as is my two adult kids (30 & 33 years old) as you can imagine. Today the Doc and nurse sat with us for 2 &1/2 hours answering as many questiuons as we could come up with. To much to cover right now, but, today I was told to get my stuff in order. Turns out, that a body can only get so much radiation in a life time. The plan is to shrink the large tumor. That result will only by me some more time. When I can't recieve anymore radiation, the tumor around my heart will start growing again and the other tumors will have been growing as well. They will just grow and spread to other parts of my body until systems strat to shut down. I haven't been given a date yet, but it seems this will be my undoing unless a miraculous event takes place.
Although today was a long day that had a tough pill to swallow. My wife and I drove a little over an hour to be at my oldest grandsons 13th birthday party. I'm glad we went, but I am beat and am now headed for the rack.
I'll write again soon when more of todays Doc visit sinks in.
Mean time, Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers on behalf of me, my wife Sue, daughter Sarah, son Shaun and my 4 grandsons.
The comfort you have brought to my family can not be messured.
Thanks again
Sam