After surviving all that trauma with the allergic reaction to the contrast dye yesterday I took 2 benadryl before bed and slept through the night well (poor A. did not, he was up every hour, too stressed out, he needs to try my benadryl trick). So this morning I get up, shower, dress, and go downstairs and call the scan place. “Is my report ready?” “Yes.” “Can you fax it to me?” “Yes, it’s coming now.” We don’t have a dedicated phone line for our fax so have to set up the fax machine (aka our printer, scanner, copier) to receive the fax and we never remember the right setting. A. thought he had it, but it wasn’t it, so after 4 attempts we finally figured out the right setting. Sheesh, doing this when your heart is pounding already is not easy. (Oh, and the faxing continued every few minutes for about a half hour (in spite of the fact that I called the scan place and told them that they could tell the fax to stop now). But we figured out how to change the setting so that it was just a phone call and voice mail and not repeated copies of the report. )
So the report comes in and it says:
IMPRESSION:
1. Enlarged retrocaval lymph node, unchanged in size from the prior study, although now appearing necrotic.
2. Increase in the volume of pelvic free fluid.
So, this sounds like not only did the tumor not grow, but it’s actually dying! This possibility just wasn’t on my or A.’s radar, so we are thrilled! I’ll see my med onc and gyn onc next week and we’ll see what they think. The fluid thing has been increasing slightly with each scan but my med onc (who actually reads the scans himself, not just the report) wasn’t concerned about it last time. We’ll see what he says this time. Later on in the report there was something else that has never been written about in previous reports. It says “A 7mm celiac axis node is also unchanged”. I have no idea what that is about, again we’ll ask the med onc next Wed.
So this means we can book our flights for our trip to Mexico in July as I won’t be doing chemo this summer! Not only am I thrilled (as is Z., who really, really wants to go to Mexico) to be going, but I am even more thrilled not to be doing chemo.
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