my last appointment with dr. lao was good on many levels.
it's always great to meet with him because we have fun together. i'm not sure many people would descibe their oncology appointments that way. so... i have a lot to be thankful for.
when we finally got down to business... blood work & physical exam both checked out fine. my 3-month scan will be at the end of march.
results from participating in a genetics study revealed that i do not have the mutant gene known to cause melanoma in a quarter of melanoma patients which is known to increase chances of pancreatic cancer. that's good news.
we talked about a lot of things. health... god... family... you name it. i'm always fascinated to see where the conversation goes. at one point emma's upcoming check-up at st. jude surfaced. he's always curious... and like a good doc... asks questions out of which flow new conversations that inevitably end up being encouraging... or sobering... or both.
this one was no exception.
taking emma to memphis every 6 months has done 3 things. one... it's assured us that the cancer isn't growing in her body. two... it's reminded us that it yet still may. three... it's invited us to keep looking to G*D for our confidence.
while i haven't been worrying about emma... i'll admit that the fact that the cancer returned to my body after so many years has heightened my concern that it may return in her's as well. but in talking with doc lao about emma, he assured me that because the cancer was confined to her lymph nodes... and with her being 5 years out from diagnosis... there is now less than a 5% chance of the cancer returning within her entire life-time!
wow! that's great news!!! wonderful news! shout from the rooftop "wooohooo" news!
that's the encouraging part.
because of those stats... he doesn't understand why they feel the need to continue scanning her every 6 months... noting that a physical exam is much more likely to find any new cancer growth than a scan would. (learning to weigh the sometimes conflicting advice from doctors is an unfortunate skill you pick-up along the cancer trail.)
but i was confused... so i asked him to explain why then i need scans every 3 months... and asked him to surmise how long he'll continue to do that.
sometimes i regret being so curious.
he helped me understand that the disease i've suffered with is completely different from emma's. since the melanoma in my body had moved beyond my lymph nodes into surrounding tissue... it became classified as "measurable disease". all they really know about my current condition is that it previously acted in an aggressive manner... and that the once measurable tumor is no longer measurable... meaning it still may be there, but too small to detect. regular physical exams increase the chances of catching it... and catching it sooner. but he also wants regular scans because the previous locations of the tumors were in hard-to-feel spots... and the amount of scar tissue from surgeries makes them even harder to feel in a physical exam... rendering them less fool proof.
but wait a minute doc. if a tumor is there and big enough to feel... wouldn't scans be the way to detect it no matter what? which is when i learned that scans only pick-up tumors that have already grown to be billions of cells... so the physical exam is always the best line of defense.
hmmmm. i didn't know that before.
that explains a lot actually. now i understand why they say that the only way to be sure it's gone is if it never returns... and what he meant after my last scan when he said "there is no clear indication of disease".
it could be gone. or it could be there. i knew that... but this helps me understand it all so much better than i did.
so doc... what does my scan schedule look like for the future? well..."if" my next scan shows nothing... i "may" suggest scans only every 6 months. and "if" you make it 2 years without something showing up. "if" we make it that long... we'll talk about what we'll do then. (his emphasis... not mine.)
enter the sobering part... stage left.
either way... it puts me right back where i should be all along...
...trusting G*D for my future. not some machine. not my doc's skilled hands.
just G*D.
...just a great big G*D.
...just a great big G*D who suffers with me when i suffer.
...just a great big G*D who suffers with me when i suffer and is working out his plan to stop my suffering.
...just a great big G*D who suffers with us when we suffer and is working out his plan to stop our suffering.
...just a great big G*D who suffers with us when we suffer and is working out his plan to stop our suffering even though we may not see or feel it right now.
it's just a matter of time.
we can't lose.
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