There's Always A Story

There is always a story to go with every visit to BC Cancer.

About three weeks ago, brother Don and nephew Andrew came back from hiking in Tombstone Territorial Park in Yukon. Don had asked if they could stay over on their way back home, because their flight arrived too late to catch a ferry.

I had forgotten about this altogether, and when Laura and I got home late Saturday night, there were strange shoes at our front door and somebody sleeping on the couch.

No worries, I got up the next morning and made coffee, and Don crawled out from under the couch cushions. Andy got up a bit later, but Don was complaining of a cold coming on. 

Two days later, Laura and I both got sick. So thank you Don.

While feeling somewhat human, I had a scheduled CT scan for BC Cancer.  They scan "throat to thighs" on me.

About a week after this, still not feeling 100%, I called my GP and asked if he could have a look at the CT scan report to see if it saw anything on my lungs (thinking this might have developed into pneumonia). There will still small (but resolving) nodes on both lungs, so no worries.

But him reading that CT report triggered the system into making it available to me.

So late last week, I went in and read the CT report.

It showed that my "lesion" had grown from 1.8 x 1.3 cm to 3.6 x 2.4 cm (doubled in size).

The radiologist in the report said "disease progression". 

This would not be good news.

However, being the ultimate pragmatist, I wanted to wait and see what Dr. Noonan and Dr. Narinesingh had to say about this, knowing that I was in a trial and the level of radiation I got was not normal. I didn't tell anyone.

Both doctors were pleased with the resulting scan, and explained away the size change by the amount of radiation I had (single dose, 20Gy) and the cellular damage it had done to that entire area.

They were confident that we were seeing the after effects of massive radiation in an especially blood rich part of my body, and my body's immune system trying to repair all the damage that had been done.

I'll have another CT in December, and see where to from then.