(20) The Results Are In

Hello everyone, so my scan is done and the results are in. First, let me say thank you to everyone who was thinking and praying for me while I was prepping for the PET Scan. Needless to say, I survived and thankfully it was not as bad as the first time around. The scan in and of itself was pretty uneventful, I am basically just lying in a metal tube for about 45 minutes nothing too exciting.

My scan showed mixed results that for the most part, the tumors in my body have shrunk, dimmed, or disappeared. However, some of the tumors in my lymph nodes, primarily in my neck and n my head, have grown a little in size but do not appear as bright on the scans. Overall this is a win, it means that the drugs seem to be effective in treating my cancer. The plan going forward is to continue the two oral meds that I have been taking for another two months and then repeat the PET Scan to see where we stand. Fortunately, up to this point, the only main side effect that I have noticed is occasionally I will spike a fever for a few days. This can be managed with steroids, ibuprofen, and ice packs so so far it has not been too much of an issue.

I have attached a picture that has the two PET scans side by side. The body scan on the left is the scan from 10/26/18 and the body scan on the right is from 1/16/19. So obviously there a difference between the two. From what I understand one of the ways that you can determine how much cancer is in a particular tumor is based on how brightly it appears on the scan. The brighter the tumor the more active cancer cells are present. Because cancers favorite food is glucose a PET Scans use radioactive glucose molecules to detect the presence of cancer on the image. By starving the body of sugars the few days leading up to the scan you are starving the cancer cells. When the radioactive glucose is injected the cancer cells absorb the glucose as fast as they can causing the bright spots. When the tumors are dimmer the tumor has not absorbed as much of the radioactive glucose indicating that there are less active cancerous cells. With melanoma, a person can live with the melanoma tumors still intact as long as there is no active cancer present and it is not continuing to grow. So even though through some of my tumors have grown that does not mean that cancer destruction is not happening because they appear dimmer than the previous scan. (Sorry for the long-winded exploration into PET Scans but as you have probably figured out I like science)

Overall I am doing really well. Very encouraged by what my scan results showed. So at this point, I just keep plugging away at life. I don't have anything too special coming up but I promise to let you know if there are any updates that arise. So as always, I am staying positive and hopeful as I trust in the fact that God has got this covered and I don't need to worry about anything else.

Left side 10/26/18 Right side 1/16/19