Sunday! Sunday! SUNDAY!!! er... WEDNESDAY!

Just five dollars gets you the whole seat but you'll only need the eeeeedge!

I was a little anxious yesterday afternoon heading for Dr. Lee's office. Was the CT scan good enough? Should I be expecting a fight with Kaiser over getting a PET scan? It's been five weeks... am I going back on chemo? Can I go back to work?

Yes, these questions and more were all answered on this week's episode of As Sco's World Turns.

In order, yes the CT scan was good enough. The report was a whopping two pages instead of two paragraphs and had many good things to say. There was nothing to see in the lymph nodes of my chest. The diseased spots in my right lung had shrunken more still compared to April and August of last year. The spot on my liver had also diminished down to less than an eighth of an inch in diameter; even smaller than when Dr. Grasso spied it when I had surgery. He said then that it was too small to go after then, even while I was already konked out. My spleen is enlarged, but that is most likely due to the chemo making things hard on my immune system and it is (was) pumped up now that the chemo has been off for a while. There is also a good deal of inflammation in the soft tissue 'down there' which is only a worry if I'd not been through radiation.

No, Dr. Lee does not need me to suit up for battle with Kaiser. She was a little sly when she said she would save her admonition for the denial for another time. There is something to be said for being owed one when someone goofs something up for you. ;)

Yes, I am going back on chemo.

Yeah, I needed a moment to let that sink in too. I tried to bargain right away because it's going to be the Xeloda again (pills) instead of a drip. I'm trying to keep an open mind here and hoping the side effects will be similar to last year's experience but without the sunburn from the inside. I'm going to need more willpower this time. Dr. Lee made it plain though that we need to do this and it needs to be for a few months to make sure all of the work I've done so far is not wasted by cutting things off too early. That would suck. Big time. I need to remember that to avoid the temptation of 'forgetting' to take the stuff.

Yeesh. You'd think a day to accept the news would be enough. :\

Can I go back to work? Sure. But Dr. Lee cautioned me to give the Xeloda a try and judge how the full dose hits me (the does I took last year was only 50% because I was getting microwaved at the same time). I agreed that would probably be a good idea and I shared that with my section manager at work today. Meanwhile, Dr. Lee is ready to write me anything I need to rejoin the wage-earning population. Just plain interacting with people again is going to make me feel good. :)