Monday, August 14, 2006

As I approach the end of August, in which I will discover if my life is about to take a dramatic change.. I think I'll try to write in here more. I really need to get my head on straight.

Here's the deal.. In March of '06 on my regularly scheduled CT Scan, they discovered 3 tiny nodules on my lungs. There was a strong possibility that these were mets (metastatic cancer) from my original kidney cancer diagnosis (see earlier posts from '04).

But, said the doc, they could be anything, maybe nothing. So we waited 3 months for another scan. Well, on June 8, they scanned again and the nodules had grown. From 3mm to 8mm on 2 of them and 8mm to 12mm on the larger one. 35% growth.

Apparently, this seemed to rule out that they were harmless cysts or scar tissue because those things don't normally grow in size like that.

Doc said he wanted to wait another 3 months because they were still pretty small, perhaps too small for a needle biopsy. I then went up to Riverside, CA. for a 2nd opinion from Dr. Gailani who, unlike my local Oncologist, has at least some experience with RCC (Renal Cell Carcinoma).

Dr. G seemed to agree with Dr. Chen that watch-n-wait was the best course to take but seemed to understand my anxiety so offered to schedule me for a PET scan which might show the nodules to be cancer thus clinching the deal.

Here's where it gets funky though. According to Dr. G, a PET scan is sort of iffy, false negatives are common so while a positive result is heeded as reliable, a negative result is ignored, putting me back in watch-n-wait mode. In other words, a nagative result would NOT mean I was in the clear.

Now I've heard from other knowledgable folks who tell me just the opposite - that PET scan false negatives are at around the 5% range for nodules over 1cm (my largest nodules was 12mm or just over 1cm at last scan).

Who the hell knows?

Anyway, the results were negative. The Nurse, whom I trust called and told me it was 'good news' which only served to confuse me more because of what Dr. G had told me.

Since March I've been in a real funk.. feeling bad, having anxiety attacks, depression etc. I've been doing nothing but sit on my dead ass and worry since March. I feel like crap a lot of the time but I don't know if that's just from depression or what.

In 2 days I get my 3rd scan since the original sighting of the nodules. If there are more of them or the 3 have grown, I believe that will pretty much clinch the deal.. even though I've already been told by both doctors that I can pretty much count on them being recurrent RCC, there is still some lingering of uncertainty, apparently.

So this is the big one. Sometimes I feel like I'm going to be told how I will die... maybe not right away but eventually. Other times I realize that is really just my depression making me be over-dramatic.

I'm really tired of feeling like crap 90% of the time. Once this is past, I really need to start moving.. doing something other than sit around thinking about dying. If it is cancer and I have to go through some sort of treatment, I'll deal with it and get through it.

But if it's not or if it's back to watch-n-wait mode then I absolutely must get back to living my life.. cause the way it is now just plain sucks.