I am absolutely overwhelmed by your generosity in contributing to my Relay for Life fundraising. I had set my original goal at $250, and within hours, I was well over this goal. I decided to adjust my goal upwards to $1000 and as of this writing, we stand at $925! This is the total after just one week! Thank you so much -this means a lot to me and will mean a lot to all the people who benefit from the work that the American Cancer Society does.
Where does your donation go? When I was first diagnosed back in June 2006, I'll admit that I was an emotional wreck with a million thoughts racing through my head... "What do I do now... I haven't a clue what to do next... I've been told not to take to much time deciding on an oncologist, because frankly, things don't look too good... How do I even start looking for an oncologist? Where can I find out more about the kind of cancer I have and its treatment options?" Fortunately, the ACS provides a huge volume of on-line and print information that helped me with these questions. They also fund basic research including grants to major cancer centers and universities around the country, including those here in the Seattle area. Their funding was instrumental in the release of tamoxifen, which is used to treat breast cancers. Closer to home, they also fund a "Cancer Navigator" who is assigned to my hospital (Swedish Hospital, and the Swedish Cancer Institute) - her job is to help new (and old) patients "navigate" through the crush of information that comes with a cancer diagnosis. And still closer to home, they maintain a library of videotapes and books in my treatment clinic for those day-long stays while we get to sit in the "big green chair" and also provide food and refreshments for the patients. Please feel free to continue with your generosity. If you wish to make your donation anonymously, I think you can type "Anonymous" or anything else you want to use as an alias if federal agents or mob hit-men are after you, in the space for your name (I haven't tried this), and then type your real information in the secure credit card information blocks.
I was going to title this post "A tale of two scans". I'm mostly pleased with the results of the PET scans I had done last week - they showed significantly less activity in my remaining liver tumors and some shrinkage in my largest tumor. I got a hard copy of the radiologist's report on Saturday when I went in to have "Silent Bob" (my take-home infusion pump) disconnected. While it's great to have access to my scans and reports, it's a two-edged sword. Closer examination of the radiologist's report indicates that I had two nodules on my lungs (one on each lobe), which I don't remember discussing before - the good news is that they're either stable or have shrunk since last time. Also, there appears to be some new metabolic activity in my lymph nodes that wasn't in my previous scans. So what does this new information mean? Damned if I know. The visit I had last week with my oncologist was cut short because of some delays we had collecting blood samples for my lab work, so we didn't really have a chance to discuss the report in detail. This week was an Erbitux-only week, so I don't normally see the oncologist. I did express my concern to the nurse who relayed the information to Dr. Gold - he sent back the message "Everything's fine!". We'll discuss this more next Thursday when we meet. Maybe access to information is not such a good thing sometimes...
A reminder to listen to NPR's Morning Edition program this coming Friday, May 4. My 90 seconds of fame (see my March 31st post) will air on a story that they are doing about a Discovery Channel special on cancer (http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/koppel/koppel.html?dcitc=w99-502-ah-0056).
Morning Edition is a 2-hour program that airs on NPR affiliate stations usually between 6:00 and 8:00 AM. Some stations start airing the program as early as 5:00 and run it until 9:00, rebroadcasting the program a second time. I can't tell you when the story will air within that 2-hour period, so you may have to listen to the whole thing - they usually indicate at the top of the hour what stories will follow in the next hour. Not sure where your local NPR station is? Check out NPR's web site and type in your zip code: http://www.npr.org/stations/. You can check the station(s) web site and find out when they air the show. If you miss it completely, you do have a second chance - they archive the stories on the NPR web site and you can listen on your computer. I'll post the link to the story next week.
