Well, the PET scan result yesterday was confusing. On Monday, when we met with the oncologist, she was quite convinced this was a metastasis. My oncologist is not an excitable person, she always hedges. This time she didn't. Then the PET on Tuesday showed the growth in my liver failing to exhibit the high level of metabolic activity associated with tumors.
This is not the same place as last year's liver anomaly (several people have asked me that). The old (and still existing anomaly) is buried in the right lobe. The suspected metastasis is in the left lobe.
Once I get a consult with the liver surgeon, I'll know more, but my current understanding is that we'll go ahead with the surgery, then rely on the biopsy to guide what comes next. I find it improbable this is not a metastasis, but the evidence is showing mixed.
calendula_witch and I spent quite a bit of time yesterday discussing the implications of all this. I am feeling very vulnerable, all too aware of my own mortality. If this proves out to be a met (which is still my belief), my survival odds have taken another nose dive. They're already pretty spooky, but I do understand the difference between statistics and prognosis.
My fear — and here I am talking about emotional reactions, not logic or sound medical judgment on anyone's part, least of all mine — is that this cancer will continue to be aggressive, and throw mets faster than we can treat them with surgery and chemo; that I'll spend the next few years grinding myself to pieces trying to catch up to something that's killing me slightly faster then we can cure it; that I'll become too sick to work, too sick to write, and within a few years, too sick to go on living.
I recognize I've had all of this news less than forty-eight hours, and mental/emotional whiplash twice already, once with the Monday consult and again with the PET result. This is no time for me to be drawing firm conclusions or making major decisions. Yet the New Zealand/Australia trip impends, Endurance is due, my life hurtles onward, and everything is inflected by this problem.
Good thing I'm seeing my therapist today. Gee, I wonder if we'll have enough to talk about?
Medically interesting … the one kind of interesting no one ever wants to be.
I can understand uncertainty being worse than "clear" bad news … when things are uncertain, it's harder for me to shift from worry mode into fight mode.
Thanks as always for sharing your process with such grace and courage.
From what you've written about your cancer so far, it has thrown you a lot of strange against-the-odds type of curve-balls and coincidences. I understand why you want to be prepared for the worst, but I'm going to hope — really hard — that this thing has finally thrown you a coincidence in your favor.
My daughter, who is a very junior doctor, tells me that when she and other medics say 'I don't know' about a prognosis, she and other medics really mean 'I don't know', as opposed to 'I know but I'm not going to tell you because it would depress you'. The numbers are the numbers but no-one has a clue which person within those numbers is the one to live and which is the one to die.
And yes, coincidences do happen, and there's always multiple possible diagnoses, though in your case it probably isn't lupus. But if it isn't glowing like a met than the logical conclusion is that it's not a met until someone proves otherwise.
even though I don't have a possibility of a cure, short of bilateral lung transplants, which are quite properly usually given to people much younger than me. The psychological process works in much the same way.
Hi. Thanks for the kind and thoughtful comment. I do know the doctors aren't yanking my chain. My oncologist is still aiming for a full cure in my case, in fact.
Whatever is in my liver, I want it out and pathed, yanno? Then we'll know what to do next.
Best Wishes for a good result from Down Under. With what you have been through, I am amazed that you are still doing as much as you do. It makes me feel ashamed of myself (I have several chronic disease problems that washed me out of full time employment over 20 years ago, but that's nothing compared to cancer and chemo) as I seem to get absolutely NOTHING done on a regular basis! I am crossing my fingers for you that the surgery results in good news. I shall implore the Powers That Be on your behalf!