My Friends

[Bob Womack]

Continued prayers for both of you and please give your wife our love.

Bob

[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

Sounds like good for bad news.
Stay optimistic. God is the pilot.

[Aragorn243]

Not such good news today. Test results from the liver showed anomalies they want to take a closer look at. This is frustration as they were made aware of her liver issues already. They diagnosed her with advanced liver cancer 13 years ago which turned out to be nothing but fatty tissues. It is most likely that this is exactly what they are seeing today yet they cancelled her chemo and are scheduling more tests. She is freaking out right now. Chemo was Tuesday and it took a lot of mental preparation to get ready for it. Now we have no idea when it will get back on track. I'm pretty confident it will, every other test she had done is clear and the liver is functioning fine.

[Surpmil]

I'd consider buying some books on cancer and how to avoid and ameliorate it by "lifestyle choices"; there are many such books published by those who have been there.

[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

Prognosis is excellent.

Very glad to here.

[mnmkeller]

I would have thought they had done a liver MRI already but I'm guessing not. I am sorry for the runaround in the end it is better to know exactly what you are feeling with upfront.

We're they able to give you the info about the 'markers" because those can give you a great deal of insight by themselves.

[Aragorn243]

They did a liver CAT scan, a liver MRI and a liver ultrasound. Now they want to do a liver PET scan. And a biopsy. It's ridiculous. I'll have to eat my words if they are right but she doesn't have liver cancer. This is the exact same thing that she went through 13 years ago. Everyone looks at the scans and says it's cancer. It's something they considered then to be very rare. It mimics cancer but it isn't. She wouldn't have survived six months back then. Supposedly, they will still do the PET scan even if the biopsy comes back negative. Why? They aren't sure of the order these are going to occur in. Her brain is clear, her bones are clear, both of these are typically infiltrated before the liver. Her lymph nodes are clear. These are nearly always attacked before the others. She had five removed back in 2009 so there is that. Her blood is clear.

[Ovidio]

She is clear!

[mnmkeller]

That must be one confused lesion ..usually the MRI would have been good enough but sounds as though they need extra convincing.

Unfortunately at this point enough doubt has been created that they have to overdo it before accepting what the lesion really is.

It's an annoying and frustrating part of the process when you really just want to get started with treatment as soon as you can.

[Aragorn243]

It isn't A lesion. Her liver is fully infiltrated with the fatty tissue. It shows up as multiple (many) small lesions. I don't know why it shows up as cancer in the scans but it did back then, I'm sure that's what is going on now. She is getting a biopsy done Tuesday and probably the PET scan next Friday. That one is still waiting on approval from insurance. Both are balking at this point which is odd because my primary insurance is non-profit and didn't balk at anything during my emergency and recovery three years ago. The second insurance is a state plan just for breast cancer and they were supposed to cover everything. That's telling me that they don't consider this to be a needed test. We shall see, the state got a 70 page outline on why the test is needed today. They have a week to process and approve it. I still think it's a waste of our time, resources and treatment time.