This Machine Killed Cancer

On Tuesday I went to the hospital for what I thought was a regular doctor’s appointment.  To my surprise, someone had rescheduled my scans without telling me.  So, now I’ve had my follow-up-to-the-bone-marrow-transplant-scans.  What they reveal is a frustrating inability of medical science to say anything about the state of my disease.  The MRI revealed 3 lesions in my brain, the same as the MRI in August.  One of the lesions is a tiny bit smaller.  The problem with MRIs is that they cannot distinguish between tumors and scar tissue.  It is very possible that the lesions are just the scars left over from my tumors.  It is also possible that they are tumors that survived the bone marrow transplant.  There is no way to tell without actually doing a biopsy, which is impossible unless I want major brain damage.

The PET scan also showed similar results to what we saw in August.  There is still a mass near my heart, but the PET activity is most likely residual effects from the chemo. In English that means the mass there is almost definitely just scar tissue. 

The truth is you can never know if Lymphoma is completely gone. Even if my scans were completely clear, there could still be Lymphoma cells in my body. The only true measure of whether the cancer is completely gone is surviving. Because of that, these scans can only bring no news or bad news. No new spots on the scan means no news, which in this case is good news. 

Regardless of what the scans showed, my doctors would be recommending radiation as the next step. So that is what I will do. Other than that we just have to wait and see. I’ll get scanned every three months. Right now, I’m in what is called a “clinical response,” meaning I show no signs of active disease. If these spots on the scan are scar tissue, they might shrink as time goes by and they might not. Hopefully they won’t grow - that would mean they are tumors. If five years go by without any signs of recurrence, the doctors will look back and say that I’ve been in a complete response this whole time. 

Cancer is funny like that. It exists in probabilities. When I first got sick, I was told that I had a 60% chance of beating it. Then, when it spread to my brain, that number dropped to 40%. The lack of response to this summer’s treatment led to a bone marrow transplant which carried a 30% chance of success. That number is low, but the fact that I survived the transplant itself bumps it up a bit. And every day that passes that I’m not showing signs of being sick that number inches up a little bit more, until someday I am hit by a bus or I choke on my space dinner at my great-granddaughter’s house and we can say with 100% confidence that I survived cancer. Til then I live with the same wonderful uncertainty that everyone else faces of not knowing what’s coming next.