Clean Scans!

Well all,

I am doing a happy, happy dance today. We got CT scan, labs and chest x-ray today. ALL was clear, NO evidence of disease. So we are done with chemo. I wanted to break down and cry for just a moment there when he told us. I had myself all worked up that it was going to be bad. Scan anxiety at its best.

But, of course, there was a but. Due to the size (3 cm) and location of the tumor (both bile ducts and into artery and vein) plus the positive sentinel lymph node then the fact that it was moderately differentiated, they want to go ahead with radiation…..and I am going to call it chemoradiation for lack of a better word. They want to do 5 weeks of 5 days a week of IMRT and do a continuous infusion of FU5 at the same time. His reasoning is that he has three risk factors for a return and this would give him an even better chance to beat it. We asked the “what if” we do nothing and his concern was the virulence when/if it returns and then we would be in a palliative mode versus the curative we are now. They are wanting to do it up there at Virginia Mason as they do something a little different with their radiation therapy….they give an IV drug the first treatment then he does injections three times a week while doing the radiation. I didn’t ask what those were but it’s on my email list of questions before we make the decision.

It’s a lot to take in especially the logistics of traveling two hours back and forth to Seattle for 5 weeks. And it means another surgery for port placement then the return of the worries about sepsis. But you know what right now, I am just reveling in the fact that the scans were clean.

Also another positive note, in anticipation of the cc registry, I requested Mark’s medical records on Wednesday….today in the mail was 10 (yes, 10) CD’s with all his imaging on them. I was impressed as heck. Now just waiting for all the actual paper records to come but it is interesting to see the actual images of before and after.

KrisV