About 1 month ago we went in for my six month followup and got bad news.... I had a large lymph node in my mediastinum(front of chest) and my calcitonin levels were on the rise. Needless to say we were less than thrilled with this news as apparently we aren't a fan of reoccurring metastatic cancer. So we talked with Dr. Moley(he makes medullary carcinoma shudder in its thyroid) and he was very adamant about having the lymph node out. Picture sawzall cutting through my sternum. Again, not so much a fan of that idea. So we went ahead and scheduled surgery, but being that Dr. Moleys surgery schedule is booked months in advance we had time to get a PET scan.
Well I went for the PET scan and walked up to radiology right afterwards to get it read, I mean there has to be some benefit to being a resident in all this right? Well they were looking at the two images side by side and the radiologist said "this doesn't make any sense". On this scan the lymph node was not enlarged and was not taking up radiation like they expected. Furthermore he read the scan as completely negative with no visible cancer anywhere. He tried to explain away with the size of the cuts with the CT and more but really it was inexplicable and one of the closest things to a miracle I have seen.
Well this was good news but now the issue is I still have a high calcitonin. It is 790 so stable as to where it was. But still too high. At this point there is no surgery to be had as they don't know what to cut out so it is just a waiting game to see which direction the calcitonin goes. I have looked into a few clinical trials for some drugs coming out for Medullary carcinoma, so we will see where those get us. They seem to be promising drugs and a reasonable option, however the only way to get one is be accepted to a study.
But for now we are going on about a 3 week trip in september around the US.
2 comments:
This is some good news. Keep healing up!
I guess gotta take it day by day. Get better. Praying for you. Love you.
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