Lymphomania: Treatment 5 and PET Results
Well people, it's been a while. I wanted to get this update up sooner since it had interesting test results, but I was a bit too constantly-sleepy the first few days after treatment, and since then I've just been busy. Today, however, I've got nothing on the agenda and it's nice out, so I decided to take my laptop outside the condo (still inside a Starbucks, though) and do a little writing.
[An aside: It turns out there's an anime convention going on here, so everyone is walking around in costume. I always like people watching at events like this (conventions, renaissance fairs, etc.), not only for the dress, but especially just to see the group in general. Everybody are friends. It's like a bunch of people who weren't quite made for mainstream culture have finally found who they're supposed to be with. It's exquisite to see...]
First things first: test results. The "skip to the end" version is that the doc seems pleased with the results and thinks we'll end up finishing the series of eight treatments (only three more to go!) with follow-up radiation to the chest, and hopefully that should be that. Now, for the details...
Below are the latest images from the PET/CT scan.
As you can see, they are a lot less glowy (I think that's the medical term) than the originals. I was expecting intensity the same as the originals, but just shrunk down to a smaller area, but that's not exactly how it works. The amount of glowiness actually represents a value called "SUV", which stands for "standard uptake value", which measures the amount of radioactive glucose (the stuff they inject you with before the scan) that has been absorbed by a mass. The scale goes from 0 to 15, where 1 is baseline normal and 2.5 means there's definitely some malignancy going on. In addition to tumor shrinkage, as the cancerous cells are killed, it also converts over to scar tissue, meaning that you can't just go by tumor size. So originally there was one main tumor and several smaller secondary tumors. Almost all of the secondary tumors have fully resolved -- they're no longer there at all. There is one remaining secondary mass that was originally 2.7 x 1.6 cm with an SUV of 8 and is now 1.3 x 1.0 cm with an SUV of 0.8, so I think that means it's purely scar tissue. (While the doc was giving me the results, I didn't have a lot of time to absorb and come up with clarifications and questions, so what you're getting here is an amalgamation of what the doc said, what the actual radiologist's report says, and a little Googling I've done since then. When I go in for the next treatment, I plan to have a few questions now that I've had time to process.) The main mass that originally measured 10 x 10 cm and had an SUV of 15 (woo-hoo! I pegged the scale!) now measures 5 x 3 cm and has an SUV of 4. The doc's summary of that was that the tumor had shrunk by more than half, and the measured activity was getting to be borderline normal, meaning that a lot of the tumor was now scar tissue.
So now two questions for the doc are: 1) whether the scar tissue will go away with time, and 2) whether or not these results affect the original prognosis -- I'm not sure how these results compare to other comparable cases ("compare to comparable"... that sounds redundant... but the cases are comparable, and the results compare, so I think that's right...). Another thing I'm curious about is the third dimension on the masses. Reduced by "over half" is a bit too "rough-estimate" for me... Keep in mind that reducing a square by half on all sides results in a square that's 1/4 the original area, but doing the same thing to a cube results in a volume that's 1/8 of the original, so that third dimension can make a big difference.
So that's it result-wise. Everything seems to be on course, and I continue to pray that God will continue to heal me. Side-effect wise, I'm still not doing badly. It does take a little longer to recover energy-wise, and my stomach feels funny for a little longer, but intensity hasn't gotten any worse. This is still much better than I expected to be doing, and I only have three more to go, so I'm not complaining!
Alright... I think that's everything. Peace out!
[An aside: It turns out there's an anime convention going on here, so everyone is walking around in costume. I always like people watching at events like this (conventions, renaissance fairs, etc.), not only for the dress, but especially just to see the group in general. Everybody are friends. It's like a bunch of people who weren't quite made for mainstream culture have finally found who they're supposed to be with. It's exquisite to see...]
First things first: test results. The "skip to the end" version is that the doc seems pleased with the results and thinks we'll end up finishing the series of eight treatments (only three more to go!) with follow-up radiation to the chest, and hopefully that should be that. Now, for the details...
Below are the latest images from the PET/CT scan.
As you can see, they are a lot less glowy (I think that's the medical term) than the originals. I was expecting intensity the same as the originals, but just shrunk down to a smaller area, but that's not exactly how it works. The amount of glowiness actually represents a value called "SUV", which stands for "standard uptake value", which measures the amount of radioactive glucose (the stuff they inject you with before the scan) that has been absorbed by a mass. The scale goes from 0 to 15, where 1 is baseline normal and 2.5 means there's definitely some malignancy going on. In addition to tumor shrinkage, as the cancerous cells are killed, it also converts over to scar tissue, meaning that you can't just go by tumor size. So originally there was one main tumor and several smaller secondary tumors. Almost all of the secondary tumors have fully resolved -- they're no longer there at all. There is one remaining secondary mass that was originally 2.7 x 1.6 cm with an SUV of 8 and is now 1.3 x 1.0 cm with an SUV of 0.8, so I think that means it's purely scar tissue. (While the doc was giving me the results, I didn't have a lot of time to absorb and come up with clarifications and questions, so what you're getting here is an amalgamation of what the doc said, what the actual radiologist's report says, and a little Googling I've done since then. When I go in for the next treatment, I plan to have a few questions now that I've had time to process.) The main mass that originally measured 10 x 10 cm and had an SUV of 15 (woo-hoo! I pegged the scale!) now measures 5 x 3 cm and has an SUV of 4. The doc's summary of that was that the tumor had shrunk by more than half, and the measured activity was getting to be borderline normal, meaning that a lot of the tumor was now scar tissue.
So now two questions for the doc are: 1) whether the scar tissue will go away with time, and 2) whether or not these results affect the original prognosis -- I'm not sure how these results compare to other comparable cases ("compare to comparable"... that sounds redundant... but the cases are comparable, and the results compare, so I think that's right...). Another thing I'm curious about is the third dimension on the masses. Reduced by "over half" is a bit too "rough-estimate" for me... Keep in mind that reducing a square by half on all sides results in a square that's 1/4 the original area, but doing the same thing to a cube results in a volume that's 1/8 of the original, so that third dimension can make a big difference.
So that's it result-wise. Everything seems to be on course, and I continue to pray that God will continue to heal me. Side-effect wise, I'm still not doing badly. It does take a little longer to recover energy-wise, and my stomach feels funny for a little longer, but intensity hasn't gotten any worse. This is still much better than I expected to be doing, and I only have three more to go, so I'm not complaining!
Alright... I think that's everything. Peace out!
Labels: lymphomania
posted by jblee at 12:36 PM
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