CT results — pretty good.

Sorry I haven’t posted earlier. My Mom and I went out to dinner after the doctor’s appointment. Wally’s Chowder House. Yummy.

Here are the CT results. The nodule in the left upper lobe of my lung is 1mm smaller than it was 4 months ago (8mm now, 9mm then). The margin of error in the scans is 2mm, though, so this is considered stable rather than shrinking. So, no growth there, which is good. I’d rather have the thing gone completely, but I’ll take stable for now.

The radiologist said, “The liver, spleen, pancreas, gallbladder, adrenal glands and kidneys are unremarkable.” These are organs you don’t want a radiologist to find interesting so “unremarkable” is an A+++.

Here’s what the radiologist said about the lesion on my 8th right rib: “Sclerotic lesion right eighth rib, slightly more prominent when compared to 7/01/09. Fracture line is seen (HA! I told them it was injured but this is the first time anyone official has confirmed the injury…). Some of this could be due to healing vs. progression of metastasis.” There’s still cancer there as diagnosed by a biopsy 4 months ago, but this is great news.

We’re going to do a breast/torso MRI some time in the next month to follow up on these statements:

“Two nodular densities along the right breast have been present and stable from 10/01/08. Please correlate with physical examination and mammograms.”

and

“Nodular density posterior lower lobes bilaterally may represent dependent changes, attention on follow-up.” My Mom can explain this further, but in essence the lower lobes of both lungs are showing some thickening/sponginess. The thickening is the same on both sides, which usually doesn’t indicate cancer.  Cancer is uneven. I’ve had a cough for about a month, so that could be it. The MRI will show what it is in more detail.

Dr. Ingber is going to follow up with another radiologist just to get some clarification on some of the readings, so I could have more information to add later.

As far as how long I’ll be on chemo, no certainty yet. Sigh. We’ll wait for the MRI, which might give more information, but it looks like another 3 to 5 months before we know for sure.

I’d really rather not be on chemo permanently, so pray that this chemo does the trick for several more years and that between now and a time in which it comes back there will be some stunning new developments in treatment — maybe even a cure.