No Bad News is Good News

Marcel and I went to see Dr. Resta today. We went to discuss the results of the PET Scan. They found a small bit of cancer in my abdomen and my pelvic area but it was not big. The biggest node is 3cm and normal I think is between 1 and 2 cm. They couldn't tell if it is in the bone marrow, but nobody is very anxious about making me go in for a biopsy.:) Since the approach would be the same, we decided not to test it now. They aren't certain if it is one of two types of b-cell lymphomas, but are certain that it is indolent (slow). They can't really say how long I have had it because blood cancers can change between slow and aggressive. Right now, my cancer sounds pretty lazy and they don't expect it to go anywhere new anytime soon. It might get bigger though. My blood work showed my cell counts to be ok so right now chemo would do more damage to my immune system than the lymphoma is. The symptoms I have would also worsen so for now I'm going to just try to stay well and rested. Friday I will have a CT scan on my neck, just to make sure that the lymph nodes there are not causing any of my cold symptoms and so that we can get a baseline for their size. As long as nothing unexpected shows up, I don't have to do anything else except for the 2nd opinion on Jan. 13th. We will see what he has to say. Apparantly, I'm considered young and healthy in the lymphoma world, (Im probably the fattest cancer patient in N. Va.) so there may be trials or drugs that I can try. That is what we will find out at Georgetown. In some ways, it is really hard to just wait and see, and not DO something, but somehow we will have to reconcile that with being proactive and see it as a gift. With the sense of urgency reduced maybe things will get back to normal crazy instead of insane crazy. By the way, I told Dylan. He says he's " fine with it, mom. It's cool as long as you don't die." So... everything is "cool".