less than perfect

Becca's scan results, which we got on Wednesday, were less than perfect. But don't turn the worry on yet because things are looking positive.

The torso CT scan was completely clean, but two areas on the thigh bones lit up on the bone scan -- one on the upper left femur and one on the lower right femur.

The doc said that the bone scan isn't able to offer any clarity on exactly what is going on, just that there's "something" going on. For instance, one the ribs always lights up because Becca fractured it coughing a while back. Her sternum always lights up because of the healing going on there. At first it was thought that the femur stuff could have been caused by Becca's daily running she's been doing since the end of the summer, but in that case you usually see the stress closer to the joints.

So after the regular Herceptin treatment Wednesday we went down to radiology for x-rays. Wednesday night was really tough; we didn't know if we were back in it again or not. Then Thursday we got the call that said the x-rays do not show any lesions on the bones, which is great news. Whatever is there has not caused any damage yet, which makes sense because Becca hasn't had any symptoms (leg pains, etc).

We still don't know what is going on though, so now after a consult with a musculoskeletal radiologist in Boston, who also sees nothing in the x-rays, we will go in for an MRI later this week. An MRI will show us the complete bone, so we can check inside the bone and even for very tiny stress fractures which may have caused the light-ups.

If we still find nothing, the doc said she'd just stay the course with the Herceptin and do another bone scan in 4 months to see what changes can be seen. It seems like modern medicine has gotten really good at finding the bad stuff, but there are still grey zones that have this infuriating ambiguity.

Anyway we're feeling good with those x-ray results. Stay tuned for the MRI chapter.