Plan of Attack

The plan of attack is I have a few more test to make sure what stage I am at, put the port in my chest and then we start chemo. The Chemo will be every other week and we will start with 8 treatments. Doctor McAllister seems pretty hopeful that the 8 treatments are all that I will need. We may have to add a couple more chemo treatments and possibly some radiation it all will depend how the cancer reacts. But Doctor McAllister said that it is his goal to have me cancer free by Christmas!!



PROCEDURES

Chest x-ray. DONE They use this to see if they can see any other lumps

Excision of supraclavicular node (ie they opened me up and cut out a sample of the cancer) DONE. They take a look at it at the lab in the hospital and if they have a questions they send it off to another lab. It took about a week to get the results back

CAT scan. Done. They scanned me from the top to bottom. They do this to see any masses in my body. The weirdest part is when they add the dye to the IV. It makes you feel hot and tingly

Bone Marrow Biopsy. Done. see the other blog this one earned its own full comments.

Mugga Scan. Done. They put in an IV and pull out some blood. then they mix the blood with some radioactive isotopes, let it sit for about a 1/2 hour then put it back in my body. Then they lay me on a table take "pictures" actually is more like 2 15min. videos. the hardest part was definitely holding still foe 15 min. at a time with nothing to look at or listen to.

PET scan. like a CAT scan with another solution they put in my IV that makes the "hot spots" glow. They overlay this on the cat scan and can see exactly how much and where the cancer is.


Port. It is placed in my chest so they can hook the IV's up to it and take out blood so I wont need to get poked every time I go in.
Burke