A Long, Strange Trip -- with the Toll Booth Behind Us

I have in front of me the Final Report on the PET scan done on April 6th of this year.  The scan intended to determine the nature of the spot in my right lung.  For the report, the examining doc compared this scan with PET scans performed on me April of 2009 and October of that same year.  (In other words, a bit before my chemo and radiation treatements started and then again after they were completed.) 

And one might say there's nothing to report.  And that "nothing," my dear friend, would be a Good Thing.  But in truth, there are several important things to report, those things are a Very Good Things indeed. 

First, there is no sign of cancer anywhere.  (Here's a brief medical explanation of the PET process: The PET scan consists of being injected with a sugar solution which is radioactive.  The solution is given time to circulate throughout the body, where it will be preferentially taken up by cancer cells.  This is called "FDG," but I don't know why...  The sensing mechanism -- that is the great big metal doughnut -- then looks for spots in the body that "light up" due to higher concentrations of this radioactive sugar.  Any such spots are identified as tumors.  But nothing of that sort showed up on the scan.  YAY!)

Actrually, the scan was not "nose to toes," as I thought it might be.  It turned out to be "nose to knees," but that's okay.  Ain't nothing going on below my knees.

During a post-scan visit with my lung doc, he mentioned that there is a rare sort of cancer that doesn't "light up" on a PET scan, but there's no reason to expect that I've contracted that.

So Good Thing #1 -- no sign of cancer.

Second, the examining doc noted that the spot in the upper lobe of my right lung -- the spot that started this Long, Strange Trip -- shows up on the previous two PET scans.  It was there, and it hasn't changed since 2009.  And it may have been there for years for all we know.

So Good Thing #2 -- whatever's going on in my right lung seems to be inert.

(In Doc Speak, Good Thing #1 is: "No evidence of FDG avid malignancy."  And Good Thing #2 is: "Two-year stability of lingular opacity [is] in keeping with a benign etiology."  Pretty neat, eh?) 

Good Thing #3 is not a direct part of the scan procedure or the analysis thereof. 

I've had this nagging concern for the last 18 months or so that, while my cancer had shown no signs of recurring at its original location, we hadn't done any scans to see if it had metasticized to somewhere else in my body.  My three main docs routinely examined my head and neck with gentle probing -- but we hadn't looked at my lungs or liver or anywhere else with a scan as sophisticated as the PET.  So I might still have a cancer, but it simply wasn't where we were looking.  And in this light, the original cancer that produced the bump on my neck was readily visible -- and that's how we caught it.  But a metastatic tumor in the lung...  or liver... 

But this latest PET scan had provided the best proof available that I was, in truth, cancer free.  And this awareness has helped me recognize now how much that nagging concern had been weighing on me.  And it's taking some serious time to adjust.  I have to see myself in this new light:  post-treatment and post-anxiety. 

I understand, by the way, that this anxiety is perfectly normal for folks whose cancer is in remission: (as in: "Sure, things look okay right now, but...")

So while my body will always have telltale signs of the cancer and its treatment,  I'm now giving myself permission to consider being cancer free for the rest of my life.  And I guess that should feel wonderful, and maybe it will sometime soon; but right now it just feels... well, unusual. 

So this Long, Strange Trip is at an end.  And the rest of my life awaits.  The concern about the spot on my lung proved to be unnecessary.  But the Trip itself has been immensely helpful:

I've come a long way 'round to wind up back where I started.  But I'm in a wonderfully different place.