This Ain't My First Rodeo

Note:  I originally wrote this post on Tuesday, September 7th, but I didn't want to publish it until I had more information to share.

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Mets.  Yes, mets.

About 6-8 weeks ago I started feeling a strange sensation when I breathed deeply.  Not all the time, but if my body was bent in the right spot, it kinda felt like something was bubbling up over my ribs.  My doctor always asks me about new symptoms at my 3 month checkup, but he's told me that I should call him if I have something new that lasts longer than 4 weeks.  At the 4-week mark I wasn't due to see him for another 6-8 weeks, so I called and made an appointment.

He was on vacation, so I saw his nurse practitioner.  After we discussed my symptoms and she examined me, she eased my concerns and told me that it likely wasn't related to my cancer, but she wanted to be on the safe side and ordered a chest X-ray and a CT scan.  This all happened a couple of weeks ago.  When my doctor came back from vacation we met to go over the results.  My rib seemed fine but there were some lesions on my liver that concerned him.  The only way to be sure was to have an ultrasound guided biopsy of the liver lesion.  In hindsight, he wasn't very forthcoming about what was going on - he never really said he was concerned this could be a recurrence but I think he expected us to know that.  He wanted to show us the CT scan but couldn't bring it up on his computer.  If I had seen it, I might have been more concerned.

I did the liver biopsy about a week and a half ago, and got the results Tuesday, the 7th.  It is cancer.  The tumor is approximately 2.5 cm x 4 cm.  He discussed the standard care protocol for this kind of metastasis.  It involves an oral chemotherapy drug called Capecitabine.  I won't lose my hair, and it should be much gentler than the chemo I've had.  I would take it for 14 days, then get a scan to see if it helped.

However, there is another option.  I could participate in a study or get some experimental treatments.  My oncologist doesn't have anything that fits my situation, but he's going to talk to someone at Dana Farber to see if they have anything.  I'm still waiting to hear back from them but I'd like to at least hear about what's available.

It really helped me to write about my thoughts and happenings the last time, and I intend to use the same outlet this time.  Things will have a different feel, though.  I apologize if you are hearing about this for the first time.  It has been a little bit exhausting and I didn't really have it in me to personally call every one.