Hopefully Cancer Free

Last week, we heard news that the doctors were kind of puzzled by John's scans.  The MRI report showed no cancer, the PET showed activity in nose and neck. Monday morning a team of doctors (including two sarcoma radiation oncologists, an interventional radiologist, an orthopedic surgeon specializing in sarcoma, Dr Wright, and a couple more) reviewed the scan reports as well as the scans.  Dr. Wright said that after reading the reports, she looked at the scans and wasn't worried about John having any cancer left.  She said based on the report, she was underwhelmed when she saw the scans.  The activity the report mentioned on the PET was very hard to find on the scans.  The NP said that the overall consensus in the room of doctors was that there was no worry about any cancer being left behind.  She said there was some dispute about removing the residual tumor in John's nose.  The ENT said that it was a minor surgery that could be easily done, but he doesn't think it's necessary as it won't change anything in John's overall cancer picture.  Some of the doctors thought if it was so easy then it should just be done.  They ended up leaving the decision to John.  Possibly the only side effect would be a risk of losing his sense of smell, so we decided not to do anything with it for now.

Although the doctors think the cancer is probably gone, the scans did show some activity of something, so they can't say for sure that it is gone. Something could mean an infection, post-radiation activity, nothing, or recurrent cancer. Typically our schedule would be scans every three months, but since these scans didn't show for sure that there was nothing left, we are doing scans in six weeks to re-evaluate and hopefully confirm the hope that the cancer is actually gone!

Thank you everyone for your love and support!