10/17 - C'mon Baby needs a new pair of shoes!

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Wednesday, October 17, 2007
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Driving to Brain Tumor clinic today was not pleasant. I had this butterfly feeling in the pit of my stomach that came ‘this close’ to making me toss my cookies. This ‘what if’ stuff is for the birds!

The oncologist said that the 2 spots are in "the exact same place" that they have been since the post surgery MRI, and that's what we saw on the images. (Kind of what I thought) They were only 2 and 3mm in size, (not the 5mm I thought the radiologist said). I think the radiologist only looked at one ‘relevant prior’ which is the last MRI he had. He didn’t look at all of the prior studies. I think, if he had, he’d have seen the 2 spots come and go. The oncologist also said that sometimes the radiologists don’t put in everything they see. (IE: Dr. Hedlin didn’t put in anything in his reports about the 2 spots, I guess because they were really small.)

However, (isn’t there always a ‘however...’) on Monday’s MRI the gadolinium contrast made the spots appear 'brighter', which our oncologist said should mean bad news. But, she's seen a lot of times that the timing of the contrast vs. timing of the MRI will make things look worse than they really are. She said, "We're pretty sure it's nothing, but can’t promise you anything." She told us to, “...have a good holiday season” and that they’d like to see us in about 2 months instead of 4 months, “just to make sure.”

Hopefully we’ve dodged a bullet. But, now we have to hold our breath again for 8 10 weeks. Everything else seems normal. Relatively speaking that is...

On another sad note, our pet parakeet Kiki died last night. He just got too old and he finally gave in to whatever was ailing him for the past several months. We had a nice little ceremony in the back yard, complete with tears and appropriately, the season’s first snow.
Marty