CTCA - Day 4

This morning was really early for us, a little too early if you ask me. We got up around 4:45am and at 6am we had a driver take us to the center. However, with this test I was not allowed to stay with Christopher. With a PET scan they inject radioactive juice into your body and then take an x-ray of your body to see where the cancer is and has been. From everything that I understand and have read this is really the only test where you can see where cancer has been and if it has shrunk into nothingness.

The CT scans that Christopher does every two months they have to compair the last months scan to the more recent scan and measure the masses to see if there is shrinkage. SO, the PET scan does a little more for the doctors visualy (from what I understand).

Christopher handled this scan really well even though it was again a tight space for a long period of time (way to go Christopher)! To boot he gets to wear a neon green band around his wrist that says he's radioactive - and no he's not glowing green...yet.

At 11am we has a physical therapy session. I was really unsure how this would work, but it was really neat. The PT pulled out some ball-point pen looking tools that had little plastic tips on the end of them. Then the doctor tapped the bottoms and tops of Christopher's feet to see if he could feel it and to what degree. He suggested that we try a PT treatment 3 times a week. This treatment would consits of putting a battery type of device that sends electric shock to the bottoms of the feet, so the numbness from chemo doesn't cause perment damage. The good news is we can buy this machince and do the treatments at home. My first thought was to pour a little water on the bathroom floor and ask Christopher to put his finger in the light socket - but thought that he might ruin the tile that way, so we will look into this little machine.

At 3pm we had a meeting with the radiology doctor. She gave us some news we didn't know and some other news that was upseting. The cancer is pretty much contained in the right lobe of the liver, with a few spots in the left lobe. However, with most of the cancer in the right lobe the amount of radiation needed to do any good would do more damage to the liver than help it. This is the same for the glass bead treatments. While we were there she showed us Christopher's CT and PET scan, it's so interesting to see this "cancer" in his body. What is even more interesting is you can see where it has shrunk as well. Shrinkage is shown as a light grey area, cancer looks dark grey and normal tissue is medium grey.

So the upseting news? Well they did a MRI of Christopher's brain and told us it was "remarkable". There is no cancer in his head and it is healthy as a horse! I told the doctor there must be something wrong with the MRI, because the part of the brain that "listens to the wife" is broken or something. :} She laughed and said - no everything seemed to working the way it should.

Tomorrow we will meet with Doctor to go over the findings and suggest what her treatment would be, which at this point (we think) will be another type of chemo drug. On Tuesday Christopher will talk to his doctor at home and shee what his thoughts are on her treatment suggestions. Either way, we are the ones in control of his treatments and even if we don't go to CTCA for treatments, this has been a very interesting expirence and I'm very glad we did it.

We can't wait to head home and see our little man, we miss him so.