happy scan news

Let me preface this report by saying I was more than a little anxious about receiving these results today. Becca wasn't worried at all, but I kept remembering the second worst doctor's visit we've had yet. It was after a set of scans just like this. And to top it all off, this coughing, my goodness. She coughs so much and it is especially bad at night, when my mood is in its most vulnerable state. I can cook up all sorts of nasty and terrible scenarios in my head lying there awake late at night.

So anyway here is the short version. All scans were clear except for the sternal area, which was the same size but looked different. Specifically, it looks sclerotic rather than lytic. You can look that up if you want but fair warning, it didn't do me much good. I merely put the terms here for the few doctor friends who I know are following along.

As for the coughing, if she does indeed cough up a lung, her CT scan says it will be a healthy one. (badum sss!) Thank you! I'll be here all week... See how I can joke now? That shows you how freaked I was. It's my chief defense mechanism...

The problem is that these bone scans are notoriously hard to decipher. They tell you definitively when something about the bone is abnormal, but you don't know whether it is abnormal because it has cancer, abnormal because you were born that way, abnormal because it is healing, etc. Our onc says the two facts that it was the same size and that the head-to-toe scan produced no other hot spots point to this being a treatment-related difference. Meaning, this is what a tiny area of breast cancer on the sternum looks like when it has been hit with tons of potent chemo. The question now is what to do about it.

To that end, Becca's scans will be presented next Thursday to the entire Beth Israel radiology staff (not sure how we scored that...), where more opinions will be obtained. Then we meet with a thoracic surgeon on June 4th, who will render a final recommendation. This guy, who happens to be the head of thoracic surgery, is highly recommended by our onc and our breast surgeon, so it looks like we will have yet another big brain on the case.

We get the feeling now that there are two possible avenues to take with the sternal area. Option 1, which has been talked about before, is that we let the radiation take a shot at it and see how that does. Option 2 is to have the area removed during the breast surgery. Every doctor we've spoken to thus far has not been able to provide much information the specifics of such a resection, which is why the thoracic guy is now on our schedule.

Which brings me to the last point. If it turns out that we are now having 3 surgeons in on this, do you think the chances are are high that we will actually be proceeding June 29? Me neither. Our deep apologies to the people who are trying to plan trips and meals and whatnot to help us around surgery time. We just don't know when it is going to happen. To tell you the truth, we never have. The best we can do is just tell you when the current best guess is, and then go from there.

Oh and just while I've been typing this I've been listening to the coughing. There are decidedly more calm spaces between the fits. I think she might be clearing up. Hope everyone has a great long weekend. This husband will be breathing a lot easier.