To be cured or not to be cured!

That is the question and no one is positive on the answer. Today I went in for my check up with Dr. Chin-yee which was great because I had alot of questions I wanted to ask him. He is the big cheese in oncology the best of the best. Not only that... when you ask him a question he explains in detail why they do things a certain way and gives pros and cons to everything! The appointment started out as they always do I lay down and the doc feels all my lymphnodes throughout my body.... Followed by a series of general overall health questions. This time much like my last appointment they talk about how well the chemo has worked! Then Dr Chin-yee talks about the possibility of a cure!  CURE! I'm confused because I thought there was no such thing. Dr Chin-yee is cautiously optimistic about a cure but shit I'll take it!!! The doc's seem to be more optimistic every time I walk through the door. Realistically if they told me today I was cured I'll still worry everyday about relapsing until the day I die... Of course he talks about the reality of relapsing and that I still have many good treatment options if I do relapse. So today I have a huge burst of confidence in my overall health. Still I have cancer and it may never go away totally. I also pressed him about the possibility of doing a PET scan. This particular scan is and imaging scan like the CAT scan but is a newer technology that supposed to be the new measuring stick for detecting cancerous cells. Dr Chin-yee sat down and explained the pros and cons to the PET scan to me. He didn't believe it was a particularly good scan against follicular NHL especially when you have more then one area of involvement of the lymphnodes which I do... He explained that this is a much better test for Hodgkins lymphoma which is cancer that is localized to the areas where the tumors are found. He told me that they can scan an actively growing cancerous tumor and the PET scan can come back as not cancerous even though the tumor is actively growing. Now he told me if after all the chemo was done and my tumor was still rather large then they would consider doing a PET scan. He said he's been burned twice in his career on PET scans. What he said was the PET scan gave him a false sense of security leading him to treat areas that he said didn't need to be treated... So for my particular case he doesn't feel comforted by a good or bad PET scan result for me... He would rather go with the CAT scan where they physically measure the tumor to see if it is growing or staying the same. After he explained this to me I felt much better. So I'll have another CAT scan in 3 to 4 weeks if my tumor measures the same I'm in remission but if the tumor has shrunk I'll be going in for and 8th and final chemo. He also said that he'll do another CAT scan in 3 or 4 months to make sure I'm in true remission... I also learned that rituximab which is the maintenance drug that they give every 3 months for 2 yrs after chemo. They used to only offer this to grade 1 and 2 NHLers the maintenance drug because studies showed greater distance between relapse but not so much with the grade 3a and b me being 3a. But now they offer the maintenance to grade 3's if I want it because rituximab is non toxic or basically because it doesn't hurt. So it's worth a try I think... I also asked him about radiation for my left over tumor. Once again since I don't have a localized tumor it's not practical to radiate all over my body. If I had one localized tumor then they might radiate... It's a possibility that I could relapse in one area and they might radiate the area that relapsed. So if this is all hard to follow that's ok it's confusing and I read and talk about it everyday with fellow NHLers. Keep in mind there are a million ways to treat Follicular NHL and theories on how to treat it. Treatment is changing so fast that most likely someone diagnosed today would be treated differently then me.

I'm so glad everyone likes the colors of the blog. The slide show has so many more pics but for some reason they're not all showing up I'll have to fix it. Linda you tell mike I'll be at golf with a big smile ready to kick some butt!
Oh and I have chemo tomorrow quite possibly my last one!