Update

Just a quick update!  Dr. Hantel just called me.  Believe me, I think we all had given up a little hope.  I had my PET scan yesterday.  In "stupid / naive terms" this is a radioactive dye that is injected and you then sit for 90 minutes to let it soak in.  After the 90 minutes, you are put through a scan that will then light up if there is cancer growing somewhere.  It also has a CT portion of the scan, that will not show as much, but the Dr. can look at that as well.  My friend Christine is queen of PET's so she could explain this WAY better then I just did!

So what we found out is the PET scan only lit up on my collar bone lymph node.  That is not good, because it does signify a recurrence, but the good news is, it did not light up ANYWHERE ELSE!!  Not even on the chest wall, which was biopsied and confirmed the nightmare that my cancer has returned.  What this means is we have caught this early and there is either not enough or it is too small for the PET to pick it up.  The CT portion of the test shows a couple 2-3 mm nodules on my right lung base. We know that at least one of these nodules was there in May.  Dr. Hantel has explained that they are not big enough to test nor are they big enough to show up on the PET.  This will be a base-line moving forward and a "watch area".  Dr. Hantel has spoken with my surgeon at Northwestern who will present this to the Northwestern Tumor board next week to see if there is a surgery or anything that they think I qualify for.  He has also spoken with the Oncologist, Dr. Phillips, at University of Chicago, where I am switching to so I can be closer to home to see if I qualify for any clinical trials now that I have a recurrence.  So bad news is I have cancer and it is back!  Good news, I trusted my instinct that something was wrong and I caught this bad boy early!!!  So Dr. Hantel's instructions was to go to Disney and let them do their homework so that is exactly what we shall do!

Thank you so much for the prayers but please keep them coming, we have a long road ahead still!

Love to all!

Amber