December 12, 2012

Today we got the results of the PET scan.

There has been virtually no change since the CT scan about one month ago.  The doctor was quite happy with that, and indicated that we have more time than he anticipated.  He does not plan to do Chemo until after the first of the year, but suggested that one tumor is large enough that it is likely to block airflow soon, so he suggested radiation for that particular tumor.  I am guessing that this would be Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy , much like I had before, where they shoot beams of 4 MeV photons at the tumor from several different directions.  The beam from any given direction is quite weak so that it does very little damage to the tissue through which it must pass to get to the tumor, but collectively at the tumor site the intensity of the accumulated radiation is supposed to be sufficient to kill what it is aimed at.  It seemed to work on my jaw, so maybe it will work on the tumor in my lungs as well.

We have an appointment with Dr. Hitchcock next Tuesday to talk about how the radiation will go.  But for today, things look good.

One more thing:  Some of the tissue taken during the biopsy was sent to a lab for very detailed analysis.  It is going to be another several days before the results come back.  This will suggest drugs to use on the specific type of cells found in the tumor at the molecular level.  These drugs would be customized to target only the mucoepidermoid cancer cells, rather than just cancer cells in general.  Lower doses, fewer side effects, better outcome is the expectation.

We are encouraged.