News! News!! News!!!

So we had a checkup in Portland yesterday to go over the CT scan and blood tests from last week. Dave and I had each come up with best/worst case scenarios in our heads (not shared), and went in to the appointment nervous as hell. I was hoping that we would have no change, and no new tumors. Dave was hoping for decrease in size of tumors. Regardless, we agreed to go waste money after the appointment at the Spirit Mtn Casino to take our minds off of whatever the current prognosis was. The blinky lights are hypnotizing.

Our doctor, Dr. Todd Crocenzi, is a quiet, soft-spoken man who shows little emotion. He started the appointment just checking on how I was feeling then got to some of the basics he gleaned from my latest round of tests.

1. I am slightly anemic and have slightly elevated white blood cell count, likely as lingering side effects from the IL-2 treatment 5 weeks ago.

2. The CT scan and PET/CT scans are somewhat hard to compare, however,

He could not see any nodule or tumor in the area in my lower abdomen which was thought to be a lymph node

Soooo, did he just say what I thought he said???

He could not see the nodules in my stomach lining seen in the PET scan in August.

Is this good news? Is the doctor smiling? Oh, my, he's smiling a little bit. What this all means is that it appears that the IL-2 treatment is having some affect on my tumors. I'm not out of the woods. This is not The Cure. I'm still having stomach problems, and there are likely lesions still in my stomach lining, but they are not visible in the CT scan. Dr. Crocenzi asked, "So, do you feel up to another cycle of IL-2?" I believe my response was, "Hell yeah!" So, I go back to the hospital the week of Dec 17-22 (Cycle 3), and again Jan 7-13 (Cycle 4). I'll feel a little sick on Christmas, but I think its gonna be worth it. Four weeks after Cycle 4, we will do a PET/CT scan and have the surgeon who did the original endoscopy and found my cancer do another one to compare the results to what Dr. Stiller saw in August. If things continue to go as they are going, we may not need another series of treatments after January. Oh boy.

I waited until we left the Oregon Clinic office to cry. I made it to the car, actually. Dave and I hugged and cried in the car (well, actually, we hugged and kissed outside the doctor's office first), and kept saying, in stunned voices, "I never expected this good a' news!" We are both fully aware that this is not the end, and we have a lot to go through still before I'm healthy, but as this is the first concrete good news we've had, both of us are flying high right now.

We went to the casino. I lost my shirt. Guess I already had my good luck for the year. Maybe we should plan that trip to Vegas for next year.