Vince's Journey

Well my scheduled treatment for today never materialized. I had my appointment with Dr. Leming and he reviewed the results of my recent CT scan. The test revealed that the effected lymph nodes in my chest have all returned to normal...this was great news! He went on to say that the lymph nodes in my abdomen are still showing up and that they have not reduced much since the previous scans...obviously not so great news. He went on to explain that it is very possible that the nodes in my abdomen are now simply revealing scar tissue...he said with larger tumors many times they never reduce back to the normal size. I even asked him how often this happens and he said 'all the time.' So to make sure, we'll have a PET scan this week to determine if there is still malignancies in the abdominal lymph nodes. He postponed the treatment until next week because you can't do a PET scan when you've recently had chemo and you're on Prednisone.

Should the PET scan reveal little or no malignancy, we'll most likely continue the CHOP chemotherapy treatments for another couple months. I was hoping we'd only do 6 but we may end up doing 8. But that would be good news because it means everything is gone or close to being gone. Should the scan reveal that the tumors are still actively malignant (and lets pray that they aren't!!!!!) he said we'll probably reevaluate our treatment path and probably due a form of stem cell therapy. I don't even want to think about that being an option at this point. I'll have the PET scan later this week and will revisit Dr. Leming next Monday.

So we have another anxious week ahead of us. On the plus side, we know the chest area appears clean. He said I had larger tumors in my abdomen and there definitely would be some scaring of the lymph nodes. Lets all pray that that is what the CT scans are showing. As I told Julie, it would seem odd that the chemo would eliminate the malignancies in the neck and chest and not the abdomen. Another plus is that my white counts were fine...no Neupogen shots this week! So (absent the anxiety!) I should have a fairly easy week.

We'll continue to keep you updated. I would doubt I'll know anything until next Monday so don't worry if there is nothing new posted...it simply means there is nothing new to report. As soon as we know something, we'll get it on the blog.

Have a wonderful Easter week! The kids are looking forward to having a few days off from school. Thanks to everyone for your support and friendship!

Peaca and Love to all,
Vince