Scanned

On Tuesday I had my PET scan. PET scans are marvels of modern science. First they inject you with radioactive glucose or fluorine (glucose in my case). That circulates through your bloodstream and gets taken up most hungrily by the overactive—that is, cancerous—cells. Then the radioactive atoms in the glucose decay, and the resulting release of radiation is picked up by the scanner. That tells them where your cancerous tumors are and how active they are.

As a result of this, I was slightly radioactive on Tuesday afternoon. For a few hours after leaving the radiology lab I was supposed to avoid small children, pregnant women, or, ironically, pets. 

This was me.

To be honest, I'm now getting anxious about the results. How much better did the chemo really make me? Will the immunotherapy be able to cope with what's left—and for how long?

And then there's the big question that I will soon be grappling with: Should I have surgery? The surgery for pleural mesothelioma is no joke. It's better than it used to be, when they would take out the patient's entire lung. Now they take out a rib, the lining of the lung (the pleura), and any other parts, like bits of the diaphragm, that the tumors have invaded. It's still pretty damn major surgery.

The real dilemma, however, arises from the fact that medical opinion is divided as to whether the surgery is helpful in the long run. Getting rid of the tumors seems like a good idea, but disturbing the tissues and causing inflammation can actually speed up the process of metastasis. Many mesothelioma patients are too old to consider surgery, but at my age I may be a good candidate, depending on what the PET scan tells us. If I am, this is going to be a very difficult decision. The various oncologists I'll be seeing in the next couple of weeks will have valuable input; but from what they have already said, I don't think they're going to have a unified opinion. 

So it will be up to me to make the call. 

Yikes.

First, though, I'm spending time in the garden today (planting my Canterbury bells), and tomorrow we are going to Chincoteague to see the wild ponies, the birds, and the ocean.