Tara's Blog - God is So Good!

My PET scan, CT scan of my chest, bone scan, and both MRIs of my chest and spine brought back great results! My radiologist and one of my oncologists finally showed me my MRI results from June 8th (they scared me so much I wasn’t able to look at them before). The tumor on my chest wall had taken over almost all of my right lung, leaving me with only a small amount I could actually use. Now, there is only a small portion of the tumor that is protruding into the lung. This is amazing news! The doctors want to try to shrink it a little more with two more rounds of chemo, then radiation to the chest. They're hoping to radiate as little of the lung as possible, to try to save it. As for my spine, the main tumor is almost completely gone. I do have a vertebra that seems to be crushed but the doctor said he wasn’t worried about it. I also have some of the cancer showing up in the bones of my upper arm but because it is a small amount, he wasn’t worried about that either. Once the two cycles of chemo are done, we’ll scan again to check the progress of the tumors, then I will most likely undergo six more weeks of radiation while continuing with chemotherapy. THEN, we’ll scan again to see if surgery is an option (they’ll be removing several ribs and giving me some sort of prosthetic). The surgery will require at least 8 weeks of recovery time which makes the doctors nervous, considering I won’t be able to do chemotherapy during this time. They don’t want the cancer in the other areas growing back. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. My doctors also want me to gain good muscle weight; I’m weighing in at about 100 lbs. They want me doing more therapy in order to lift my arms up higher, so that they are out of the way during radiation. I still continue with my PEMF machine (magnetic pulse frequency) and infrared sauna, along with my natural supplements. I’m not yet out of the woods, but this is really great improvement. My doctors say I am the absolute BEST patient! God is so good.