Med Week and Mothers Weekend

This week is full of medical appointments. Monday I had the PET scan. Today was my seven hour chemo day. Thursday is a three and a half hour chemo day and Friday I have a follow up appointment with the surgeon. Although I have no appointments on Wednesday I will be hooked up to the 5FU infusion pump on that day just to fill out Med Week. Today I half received the PET scan results. I say half received because the dopey radiologist did not compare this PET scan with the last one. The instructions they send ahead of time tells you bring any scans, x-rays etc. that were not done by them. So I gave them the CT scan that was done last October when I was looking into SIR Sphere treatment. The radiologist compared yesterday’s PET scan with the October CT scan which is an almost useless comparison. He totally ignored the fact that I’ve had 4 previous PET scans done by them. Dr. George requested that the radiologist do another report with the proper comparisons. We should have that when I go back on Thursday. In the meantime She compared the raw data contained in this report with the raw data in the previous report as best she could. I did the same. It appears there may be some slight deterioration in both the liver and the lungs. I say “may” because it’s hard to tell without a comparison being made because what we ended up with is one radiologist looking at the August scan and a different radiologist looking at the January scan. They could be looking at the same thing and describing it differently. For example, in describing the liver, the previous radiologist said there was a “mean” uptake value of 4.2. The current radiologist described one tumor with an uptake value of 3.5 and one with a value of 5.4. In other words he didn’t describe them in terms of a “mean” value. The mean value of 3.5 and 5.4 is 4.45, not significantly higher than the last one. This analysis is not definitive but we’ll know better when the same doctor looks at both scans. The most recent report seems to mention more tumors in the lungs but that too is somewhat confusing. None of them showed metabolic activity (SUV) meaning they are not active. It also appears that the “extra” tumors may have shown on the CT scan. Again, it will be more informative when the radiologist compares the two PET scans. On Thursday I’ll also get the results of the blood tests taken today which will tell us more about the liver. We’ll see. Last weekend was for mothers. On Saturday I went to Avalon to see my mother be installed as president of the Benevolent and Patriotic Order of Does, local chapter. This is one of the benefits of this disease. She has served as president three time previously over the past 28 years and this is the first time I’ve been able to go to her installation. I have a lot of free time now. Thankfully I was physically able to make the trip. I enjoyed it and was glad to be able to be there to support my mother. Congratulations Mom! On the way home Sunday I stopped for a nice visit with my moth-in-law. AJ is working hard getting through his academy training. He makes me proud. Way to go AJ! Terry's cousin-in-law Kris in Arizona sent us a beautiful pictorial book of the Grand Canyon trying to coax us into making the trip out there and fulfil another one of my bucket list wishes. She even sent a blank post card for us to send from there. Thank you Kris. I'm getting close to convincing Terry to make that long plane trip. She's had more than her fill going to see grandson Jake in Florida. I'm working on it. I got more responses from the Oscar post on December 29th than any other post. Shows you what a cute dog can do. Unfortunately the restrictions imposed by the blog server required that I severely edit the length of the video. It was originally longer. I just posted the original version on You Tube if you care to see the whole thing. While watching it, keep in mind that it is a representation of my fear of Oscar not understanding where I am after I die. No, Oscar is not really looking for me cuz I'm not gone yet. He's acting, and doing a very good job of it. I love the song. When you look at it an advertisement may come up to buy the song. The copyright owner does that in apparant exchange for letting you use the song. There's an "x" there to close the ad. Here’s the link: Oscar Carry on. ------------------------------------------------------