Path of Hope

Good day all.  
 

 What's up doc?




    

 Treatment tip:  for those who may read this and be going through Chemotherapy treatments or know someone going through Chemo, mouth sores maybe a concern.  I had mouth sores initially every couple weeks with treatments and used Baking Soda mouth rinse and paste to ease the pain.  Then started using Baking soda as a mouth wash as part of my daily routine which helped.  Then I switched to Sensodyne Baking Soda toothpaste - have not had a mouth sore since.  I suggest trying it out.  May not work for everyone - though it has for me.  Just wanted to share.
        
     Treatment update:   Had a nice visit with my Oncologist on Tuesday and had the chance to review the surgeon's report from my recent exam, in a little more detail. Which gave us a little more information and some further insight to the state of the disease. When diagnosed there were some nodes which are no longer there and the main site causing the "narrowing" appears unchanged. Everything else looks clear from the exam.  (which did not include the liver - so that spot as of now is still there)   Then we had an interesting conversation about what we see as the next steps, which we have had in the past as well, just not with much support or agreement from the doc. 

    This my vision, which we all agreed upon,  I am calling  the "Path of Hope".    Next step is an MIR, which is part of the 3 tests I was expecting, though could be as far away as 10 months.  10 months is a fair amount of time, and is mostly because the request is elective and not "emergency".  In the mean time though Chemo will keep going as scheduled and regular CT Scans as expected.   The MIR will help to paint a clearer picture of the disease status in the liver and if the liver spot is actually cancer.  It could be scar tissue or other dead tissue. (hope)  Then once the MIR is done we will look at the PET scan - providing final clarity to the situation and if ultimately a surgery can happen to rid me of this disease.   When these conversations started a couple of months ago the doctor was hesitant to go this route.  This time he agreed with us and was certainly more positive that these are good steps to be taking.  When we began this stage of the process a couple of months ago we were expecting a 6-8 week process, which went to 6-8 months to now being an undetermined amount of time - more then a year.  So we will continue on with the process and look for positive progress.   The Path of Hope is the journey.   


Keep smilin everyone and have a great long weekend. 

Jtee