...Lace Up Your Gloves...

The short version...I went for that follow up PET scan on November 13 - the day before we left to do the 3-Day in Arizona (I still have to finish chronicling the experiences...)

We knew I was coming back to results on Wednesday and I hoped to have the same 'miracle patient' reaction from my oncologist this time around. Not quite yet. While there were absolutely no areas of hypermetabolic uptake, there were two small 'attenuated' areas in the brain that the scan report interpreted as 'can not rule out metastases'. So, my oncologist sent me for a brain MRI to rule out the mets. At the same time, something showed up that has been showing up on the last couple of PETs. A few spots in the bone that looked to be 'evident of treated metastatic bone disease'. My oncologist has never been convinced that there were bone mets, and in any case, the treated disease was never a cause for concern. However, he ordered a total body bone scan anyhow. I've been doing pretty good... I know this whole disease charts an uncertain course, and that just because I have been fortunate enough to be NED for a while, doesn't mean that it will stay that way... one can only dream.

So, I finally got in with the oncologist last Wednesday. The good news is that the bone scan came out clean. The brain MRI did not. Apparently there is a smattering of sub-centimeter foci on the brain...

Ironic that the chemo worked so well on the rest of the disease that there is nothing left, but that damn blood-brain barrier worked, too...He got me immediately into a radiation oncologist, who we like very much, and I start today with 10 rounds of whole brain radiation (WBR).

First came trying to breathe. Then we cried. Miracle patient, or normal human being, this weekend we did what we do best... continue to live our lives.

I am comforted by many facts... by the fact that I was asymptomatic when they caught it. By the fact that the rest of the scans are completely clean. By the fact that the original mets responded very well to the treatments. This is what I have to depend on. It sucks. It simply sucks. But I will fight and scream and kick and live with every ounce of my being for as long as I have.

This is two weeks - and a little more baldness - and then we go on with the business of living, whether or not the scenery has changed.We have no choice in what we are dealt, but we have a choice in how we deal with it. And although Greg and I have, and will continue to have, the hard, scary times...I will never give up the fight.

So, I lace them up again, and continue to fight. I'm trusting what they tell me, and I'm going to battle through. I'm strangely comforted at the fact that it doesn't involve chemo and compromise to my immune system, my strength, or my daily activities. Perhaps I am misguided, but until I know otherwise, this is how I choose to approach it. I hope to dance with NED once again - but first I hope that this is simply controlled and stabilized. And I'm still counting on the rest of those 50 happy years.

Time to take the first step towards conquering the world... again.