So by now I've probably told most of you the bad news, but here's the skinny:
My PET scan showed uptake in some lymph nodes along my ribcage just under the field of radiation. The cancer they blasted with radiation is gone, but some sneaky bastard cancer has cropped up where they didn't radiate at all.
Ordinarily they would biopsy to confirm that it's Hodgkin's even though it's pretty obviously Hodgkin's, but this cancer is in a bad spot under my ribs and close to my heart. The surgery is riskier than it's worth, so in true House style we skip straight to treatment, which means back to chemo.
The bitch of it is -- yes, that's actually NOT THE BITCH OF IT yet -- this new chemo, ICE, is even more nasty than ABVD, and because they want to infuse it very slowly, they are actually hospitalizing me for three days to get it done.
I'll be at MGH Wed-Fri if you want to come visit. I promise to have my ass hanging out of a hospital gown.
My oncologist says I have to do this at least three times, spaced about three weeks apart.
You know, I have all these things I've been waiting to do -- waiting to feel better, waiting to be healthy. It occurs to me now that I should do as many of them as I can, quickly. There might be a bigger lesson there but I'm choosing to ignore it.
2 comments:
Is blasting you with more radiation too dangerous to do again? Because if the cancer they pewpewpewed is gone, I would've thought they'd just give you the ol' pewpewpew again. To get the stuff that just showed up.
Obviously, IANAO.
The cancer is too close to my heart to radiate, for starters. But also I guess statistically at this point new chemo has a higher success rate than more radiation.
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