Thursday, December 3, 2009

The Results Are In...

I knew I would miss someone.. or three.

No matter how diligent we are as humans we are bound to make mistakes. Albeit small, mistakes do happen over our lifetime and the right thing to do is to own up to them. Come on Tiger, tell us what really happened.

I too made a small mistake on my last rendition of my blog. My deepest apologizes have to go out to my brother-in-law Ernie Latchford who came to Toronto with his wife twice to pick me up and bring me home. The second person I forgot is Lynn Harris who's daughter Melissa played lacrosse with Trent this past summer. Lynn took me to Toronto, stayed with me for a treatment and then dropped me off at the Lodge one late afternoon. And finally, to our ex-neighbour Mike Lord who drove me once and while getting closer to the PMH we found out his daughter lived across the road from the hospital's parking lot. We went for lunch with Kayla and had a awesome meal.

I hope that's everyone now. To everyone, thank you once again.

***

Results! I promised to inform everyone who carefully reads my blather here to update them following my visits to Toronto last week for my results on an MRI for my head and neck and a CT-Scan for the disease which infests my lungs at the present time.

Well, the news is good for the most part. The tumour which was close to my optic nerve and potentially in danger of growing and causing blindness is GONE! My doctor told me they had annihilated it with nothing remaining. Very positive news for us and since I have been seeing well again when looking to the right, I was confidently expecting this result. Those that I have told are excited about the news and I am as well. However, the fear of cancer recurrence lives in us all suffering from it daily. It's gone for now, but when will it come again is our greatest fear.

As for the CT-Scan, the news there is good as well. The cells are stable, as Dr. Sui puts it. I then asked "What does that mean really... Stable?". As she explained the size of the nodes are relatively small, ranging from a millimetre to the largest at approximately two centimetres. There a lots of them in both lungs but they are tiny. She then went on to say that there has been a small 8 % growth of the cells over the past several months. But, according to Dr. Sui, when you take into consideration 8% growth on a two centimetre nodule that's a very little concern to the doctors and therefore considered, 'Stable'.

As I have stated before, there is no known chemo to destroy this form of cancer. So, I have to live my life waiting for some dedicated doctor to find one. And they are out there. When they will find it is the million dollar question. Following my meeting with Dr. Sui she told me the next steps were for her to search for another trial that would be good for me to consider. You see, I cannot just jump on any trial. With a heart history as vast as mine, most of the trials automatically rule me out as a prospective candidate because they don't want me skewing the trial by getting sick from a trial drug or damaging my heart further in the process.

So, as Dr. Sui searches, I am going to take the month of December to spend quality time with Jennifer and Trent and forget about travelling or living in Toronto for treatment. I have an appointment with Dr. Sui January 11, 2010 with hopes that she will have found something to destroy all of my cancer. Let's hope 2010 is a much better year.

Thanks for sharing and reading...

Next blog... January 1st.... It's a Wonderful Life

2 comments:

Unknown said...

That is AWSOME news Barry. We are so happy for you and your family. I will keep you in my prayers for even better news in Jan. 2010.

Allie said...

Great news Barry!