Clean Scan

We met with my oncologist today and the scan looked good! The tumor is unchanged, and there is nothing new.

That is as good as it gets in my world... I feel relief and will stay the course till the next scan in another 3 months. My doctor wants me scanned every 3 months for the first year, then every 6 months after that for another year or so.

Apart from diet, exercise and naturoapathic supplements, I am trying to stay focussed on my mental game... it's difficult to embrace a "normal" life when I know that I am living very close to a precipice. This first clean scan, makes it easier to believe that I might just get through this... That's the plan.

The rest of the summer will be full of travel, picture making and family...

Taking the plunge...

I'll be getting my first scan early next week, and will get the results from my oncologist on Wednesday the 28th.

This will be my first contact with the world of MGH and my cancer team since the operation in March. I've enjoyed being in a sort of limbo, quietly enjoying the summer while having no contact or interactions with the medical world. I knew this first scan would be coming, but was able to keep direct thought of it somewhere off in the ether...

So here's my situation:

A. If the IORT operation was successful in killing all the malignant cells in my tumor AND I didn't have any metastatic cells floating around my body, then I'll have a clean scan and can rest easy for another six months till the next scan.

B. If I had metastatic cells and they have begun to grow in other organs they may show up in the scan. If so, I'll have few treatment options beyond more chemo, and I'll be in big trouble.

I'm hoping that all the work I've been doing with conventional and naturapathic treatments as well as diet and mind/body work will have kept the cancer isolated in my shrinking tumor, that it was killed by the IORT and the scans will bear that out.

They tell me that after 2 years of clean scans I can start to rest easy, and after 5 years they stop looking, since nobody with active pancreatic cancer lives for 5 years...

So this is scan #1...