A Soft Landing before the Next Thrill

October 2nd – which happens to be the 27th anniversary for Daren & me, plus Helen Sachet’s 91st birthday (Happy Birthday!). Today was occupied by the previously mentioned scans at Virginia Mason in Seattle. At about 9:45 I was escorted into an examination room by a character named Uri … plied with “berry smoothy”, shot up with radioactive sugar, then told to relax for 45 minutes while things worked inside me. I next went to receive my PET scan – which involves lying on your back, keeping as still as possible with your hands above your head – for 25 minutes. While lying like this on the shelf, it moves through a big circle (Uri called it a gantry) and the scanner does it’s thing. Very similar to CT scan and MRI.

Following the PET scan, I went to get a CT scan of my head. This was much quicker (5 minutes), but involved injecting me with a “contrast”. Side effect of the contrast injection is a warm, then uncomfortably warm, feeling through arms & torso. I will try to no longer kid certain person(s) about hot flashes.

At about 3 pm, we got to meet with Dr. Aboulafia, my lead physician at VM. BEST NEWS POSSIBLE! The cancer I have appears to be localized to my bladder and not spread to/from other organs (Yeh!). And, for those who may have been doubters, my CT head scan came back NORMAL.

Next steps – colonoscopy Friday morning (if you need to know, try googling it). The colonscopy also came back normal, with no signs of polyps, cucumbers, or tumors.

I will start chemotherapy on October 8th at VM with two drugs that have successfully treated the small cell cancer that I have. For some reason, a rule of “3” applies – I’ll get treatments for 3 days (only first day in hospital); treatments once every 3 weeks; and 3 treatments before the next CT scan to see what effect the chemo is having.
There are probably 100 possible side effects to chemo, but I’ll get through it.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts, prayers and positive energy for me and my family. You are all amazing to me!