The Results Are In....

and the loser is......

Me? Kind of? I don’t know? Nothing but clear and specific answers over here.

So where were we? Ah yes, I had a PET scan last Friday the 18th. What’s a PET scan you ask? Essentially I get injected with a radioactive ‘tracer’ and an hour later they scan me to see where I “light up.” The more lit up I am, the more cancer there is (potentially). PET scans are useful but don’t always indicate cancer. At times inflammation can also appear similar to cancer so you can see how they can not be the sole factor in trying to identify cancer. With all scans though, they take some reading and googling, and more reading and googling, to decipher what is actually going on. Pro Tip: Use ChatGPT to decipher your results.

Disclaimer: I went in knowing that the output could be riddled with mistakes or inaccuracies but what can I say, I break the rules.

But rebellious behaviors aside, I had my ChatGPT translated results AND my oncologist’s interpretation and they both matched up.

So, without further ado, the results are:

• My lung issues have cleared up. Good news.

• A few areas have gotten smaller. More good news.

• On the flip side more than a few areas have grown slightly. Not good news.

• A few new spots again- bad news:

  • Multiple spots/lymph nodes near the back of my liver.

  • Spot near the front of my pancreas.

  • Multiple new spots lighting up in my chest and abdomen.

  • New spot on my sternal manubrium (upper part of my sternum).

  • New spot on my left femur intertrochanteric region (Top of left thigh bone, near the hip).

  • And both hips, near the back, have more activity/growth now

  

Final Verdict from My Doctor: Mostly kind of stable?

Why Mostly kind of stable? Well yes there were new spots and that’s never good, neither is growth. But the growth that happened wasn’t massive and the new spots weren’t massive nor were they in any major organs yet, which according to my googling, is a good thing.

The main reason we’re saying mostly kind of stable and why I’m okay with it- I was on a medicine break for a month. So for some shrinkage and minimal growth and spread to occur while off of treatment, I expected worse. Am I thrilled? No, of course not however I am not spiraling. Where a 4th or 5th line of treatment was a hail mary previously in my mind, now there’s hope it might help.

It should be said that ‘help’ does not mean cure. Without any new treatments or advances in treatment for my cancer, eventually it will overcome whatever we throw at it. More time is a win for me though. That’s really what it’s all about. I’ll never truly have enough time with my loved ones, even if I live to 100 I’ll always want more. But another year, month, day, minute- I’ll take it.

So I’m back on Lenvima now (my daily pill). We’re still holding off on Keytruda as we believe it caused the lung inflammation. I have a CT scan in about two weeks to confirm that has cleared up and then we will discuss Keytruda again. I feel okay most of the time- fatigue and pain are my biggest side effects now. So if you were to ask me how I’m doing right now I’d say “Okay.” And for now, I’ll happily take that.

-Joe