"R" word

Hi Everyone:

We are home. Jim had his third chemo treatment today and is sleeping soundly right now. And it begins. But maybe it won't be so bad this round. We thought he was dying last time he was so sick and weak.

Could be, too, that GOOD NEWS might make Jim feel better. And we do have good news. We also met with Jim's oncologist today to go over the CT scan. Here's what the last line of the CT report says under "COMPARISON": Study dated 2/5/2008. There has been a complete resolution of the previously described 5.7 cm (it was bigger before that because this was after his 1st treatment) retroperitoneal mass. The spleen has enlarged since the previous study."

Doc said for all intents and purposes, without actually saying this, Jim's cancer is probably already in remission. Jim will have to get the rest of his chemo, but will not need 8 treatments instead of 6 and is doing well. He does have a borderline sized right paratracheal lymph node that is enlarged, measuring only 10mm. That was larger in the original CT scan, too. They will do another CT scan after chemo #4. Doc isn't concerned about enlarged spleen. He doesn't know why it's enlarged, but he doesn't seem too concerned about it. But he is going to keep an eye on it. He said he wouldn't even do a CT scan after chemo #4, but is going to do so more for the spleen than the lymph nodes.

Why do I always think of questions AFTER the doc appt. My question. If you took out one of those lymph nodes and examined it, would you find cancer, or does that mean because they are normal size it doesn't exist? I guess it doesn't matter.

OH, and this is huge HUGE... The doc feels the chance of the duodenum perforating is no longer a concern. I didn't go into this too much because it was just too much to wrap my head around, but if the lymph nodes shrunk very fast (and they did) there was a chance that the hole in the duodenum would not have a chance to heal up and it could rupture, and Jim would have had to stop chemo, have a HUGE surgery, and chances are he probably would had a terrible struggle to make it through the recovery (sometimes 2 years) from a Whipple surgery, not to mention the cancer would have grown out of control....so. So, Jim's pretty much out of the woods with that one.

Thank you for your prayers. Keep praying though. We want all the LN's normal size. We want that spleen normal, and we want the next 3 treatments to go off without a hitch. Pray for protection of Jim's job, that he get back to work soon, and that has he gets off the pain pills (he's down even more now) that he does not have withdrawal symptoms.

So, we're taking the "C" word, and almost changing it to the "R" word. Can't use the word remission quite yet, but can't use the word cancer either. This is good.

I sure hope I don't have to clean up any puke.

I'm spent.
G