New PET/CT Scan

Since going back to work full time on October 1, 2013, I have been very tired and fatigued.  I wake very early in the morning to get my schedule started, and I stay up later than I would like to fit the rest of my schedule in before bed.  I have also been losing weight a bit faster than I have wanted.  It is normal to lose weight on this diet if you have extra weight, but they do hope you only lose a very little bit at a time.  This added a lot to my stress, and I began to get a bit anxious and depressed.

There was also very little time left in the day to focus on meditation, prayer, affirmations, visualizations, etc. to work on the mental, emotional, and spiritual parts of this physical illness.  It all became very over whelming at times, and I felt like I wasn't improving the way I had hoped.

Add all of the above to the fact that my surgeon and an occasional oncologist was telling me that the lump in my armpit was a sign that the cancer was spreading and progressing, and that could make anyone feel a bit down.  Because of this, I have wanted to slow down and take time for me.  It has been so hard for me to keep my positive outlook, especially when I feel little to no support from my doctors and pure exhaustion.

I decided to ask my doctors to support me a bit more.  I wanted them to help me get some much needed time off to focus on me and time with family.  For if this was truly spreading and progressing the way they said, wasn't it time to just be with family?

My oncologist was unable to help at all.  I had consulted with another oncologist at the request of my surgeon, so she referred me on to the consulted oncologist, and he referred me right back to her since I had just consulted with him.  My surgeon felt like the only way he could help me was if my disease was truly documented as progressing.  He needed the right set of facts to support this, so he recommended a new PET/CT be performed.

I was hesitant for a few reasons.  First, I was not happy about the exposure to more radiation.  Second, I didn't want to have to pay for it, and thirdly, I was a bit scared of what we would find.  He did make a good argument though.  They needed the right information to get me the rest my body needed to heal.  After taking a day to decided if this is what I wanted and needed, I decided it was time to follow-up and see what was going on in my body.  The day after Christmas I had the scan done.

The fun part was that my fellow co-workers that I see and work with everyday would perform the test.  The strange part was that my fellow co-workers that I see and work with everyday would perform the test.  No big deal.  I am an easy IV start, and I was able to just lay there for about 45 minutes while the glucose/radiopharmaceutical did its job.  It really wasn't horrible, and it was over before I knew it.  I went home and secluded myself for a few hours until I was no longer radioactive.

The next day at work the first thing I did when I had a spare moment was sign a release and get my results.  This is what they said...

Not bad at all.  I was pretty happy with the results.  There was no sign of the lymph nodes under my sternum like last time, and lymph nodes in my armpit were shrinking not getting bigger like I had been led to believe. Yay!  They did see some unusual uptake in some areas of the chest, but this was thought to be a normal occurrence of blood pooling, and nothing to worry about.

This was really good news for me, but I wasn't letting myself get too excited yet.  It just seemed that whenever I got good results in the past, one of my doctors would make me feel like they weren't that great.  So, I was patiently waiting to see what they got out of that.  The call didn't come the next day, and I figured that was because of the holidays and most offices were closed.

Monday came, and although I did get a call, I was working and unable to answer the phone, and my surgeon was in and out of surgery all day, so he said he would call the next day when he was in office all day.  I waited as patiently as could be, and of course when he called I was with a patient and missed the call.  Once finished with the patient, I was able to call back and get him right away.

What he said surprised me a lot.  First thing he said was that the palpable mass in the armpit had no uptake of the glucose/radiopharmaceutical at all.  This meant that whatever it was it was not cancer.  He had told me at more than one appointment that he was 99.9999% sure it was cancer because it was getting larger and this was the very nature that defines cancer.  What a relief for me.  This whole time I had thought the lumps were one or more of the lymph nodes seen on past scans.  He explained that the lymph nodes seen on the past scans were actually the lymph nodes seen this time that were getting smaller!  This was one time I was happy for clarification from him.  This was so much better than any other news I could have gotten.

He was very humble and respectful the whole time we spoke, and that was very refreshing.  I was so used to mostly negative feedback from him.  I don't believe he wanted to hurt me with his negativity, but I do truly think he was in his way trying to help me, he just didn't know how to go about doing it.  He had been schooled and trained in a certain way, so all he knows is the training that he has received.  What I am doing is completely foreign to him.  He again offered to get me any information I might want on any chemotherapy drugs and even on Herceptin which we had discussed multiple times for the HER2+ breast cancer cells in my body.

He also said he would write a letter for me with the facts.  This is not something I expected from him, so I was very grateful anything he was willing to offer.  He was not sure why I was feeling so tired and fatigued all the time, but he did recommend having further testing done to see if I was malnourished (which he didn't suspect as I looked very healthy) or having thyroid issues.  I told him my family practice doctor was actually helping me with this already as he thought thyroid problems may be part of the puzzle as well.

The results were so much better than I could have hoped for.  This just goes to show that Heavenly Father is always looking out for me and taking care of me.  I'm so blessed to have so much love and support always from so many people.  Thank you everyone for your love and support!