Lymphomania: Staging and Checkup

So Thursday I went to the doc for a post-treatment checkup. It was pretty uneventful and mostly consisted of me giving the doc info about what side effects I'd had. They drew blood to check my counts and make sure they weren't too low; some were still below normal, but not to the point of concern, and they should continue to recover until my next treatment, at which point they will test again. I did receive two pieces of information that were noteworthy to me, though. First, to refresh, as I mentioned in my last post, I had not seen a visible decrease in the tumor, even though the doc had said that it could react fast enough to visibly shrink within one to two days. I asked if that should be cause for concern, and the answer was no, which set me at ease some. Second, I got the bone marrow results back, and they came back normal! When the PET scan results came back and set the cancer at Stage 2, that was kind of pending the results of marrow biopsy. That the marrow is normal means the stage gets to stay at 2 instead of going higher, which is awesome!

And speaking of PET scan results, I thought I'd give you all a little treat. I got copies of the actual images, so you all get to see a picture of my insides where the tumors are!




There were lots of images, but these were two that I thought most representative of the situation. PET scans work by first injecting radioactive glucose (sugar) into the blood. Most of your body gets rid of it relatively quickly, but tumor cells process it slower, so if we take pictures of where the radiation is coming from, we can see where the tumor cells are. The first image shows a slice of my body going long-ways from my head down to about the middle of my stomach. Of most obvious note is the large glowing mass in my upper chest. (Does this remind anyone else of ET?) Everyone, meet my tumor ... tumor, meet everyone. You can see how it creeps up into the lymph node on the left side of my neck, and also visible is a tumor under my right arm. Additionally, although not shown in this particular picture, there are tumor cells in the lymph node on the right side of my neck.

If you look at the second picture, you'll see a slice going down through my body at the top of the chest. This shows the depth of the main tumor; you can see it wrapped around the breast bone at the top and protruding fully half-way down through my body. You can also see the one under my right arm on the left side of the image, giving a frame of reference for exactly where the slice was taken if you compare with where that smaller tumor is in the top image. So now you've seen my tumors... impressive indeed! I'd always heard the dimensions of tumors in other people and wondered how they could fit, and now I find myself wondering the same thing of the tumor inside me. I mean... isn't all that space pretty much spoken for? I just don't see how you can fit that inside and not cause serious problems. Bodies are weird. The most important thing that these images show is that there is nothing below the diaphragm; that would have bumped it up to Stage 3. Even though it's big and spread to a couple other areas, it's still localized only to the top part of my body, which is a great thing.

You'll probably also notice a couple of other areas that are lit up in the top image -- mainly the heart and brain. Those are not due to cancerous cells, but are just place where the radioactive glucose is still hanging around. In the brain's case, it's because of how the brain uses sugar; the doctor said that because of this, you can't use PET scans to image brain tumors. I'm not sure why it hangs around the heart, though. And while they're not shown here, other images have the kidneys and bladder lit up since the kidneys are the ones filtering the glucose and then sending it to the bladder. (Neat!)

It still blows my mind that we are able to do this -- to make these images. Without one cut or invasive procedure, we have pictures of all the tumors in my body. When I first got them a week and a half or so ago, I thought they were fascinating (I still do) and wanted to post them pretty quickly. I spent a lot of time going back and forth through them, looking at the different slices and views of my body; there's also a series of CT scan slices (they use the CT data to help build the final images) to look at. However, later in the day, it was like a switch flipped... I guess when the novelty wore off, it really hit me as to what I was looking at, and I suddenly didn't want to see any more. That's pretty much worn off now as well, but it was an unexpected reaction and the reason why I drug my feet putting them up. But they're up now -- for everyone's viewing pleasure. Until next time. Peace.