Weekend Update

I've made significant progress over the past week with improvements in pain, lung capacity, range of motion, and stamina. Day to day progress is evident and I'm bored enough that I've started thinking about P&G e-mail. I've actually read some e-mail, but I'm not back in normal work mode yet.

On Friday October 10 we met with the oncologist and were able to clarify at least some of the questions related to my cancer:
1. The stage III lung cancer diagnosis is based on T2N2M0. In other words, the size of the tumor, the distance between the tumor and a malignant lymph node, and no other masses.
2. The cancer in the lymph node did not show up in the CT Scan or the PET Scan because it has not yet "bulked up" and/or because the main tumor may have blocked visibilty, but it is really there.
3. It is important to attack the cancer aggressively and not wait for it to show up in a scan.
4. The two most important immediate steps are recovery from surgery and chemotherapy. Healing should be complete enough to begin chemo by the end of October.
5. There is no clean way to determine that lung cancer has been eliminated. Going forward frequent scans will be used to determine that there is no new cancer growth.

Beyond these points, appropriate treatment gets a bit fuzzy. Concurrent radiation is normally included as a standard part of stage III lung cancer treatment. However, there are some unique characteristics to my case and results from recent studies which indicate that radiation may not be best. At this point several oncologists from Cincinnati as well as oncologists from the Sarah Cannon Cancer Clinic in Nashville are split 50/50 on whether my treatments should include radiation. The issue seems to be that radiation has not only side effects, but also potential risks of collateral damage and may not actually improve long term survival. There are also some potential new/experimental treatments which may or may not be appropriate. Needless to say we will be getting a second and perhaps third opinion in the next two weeks.

Thanks for the many ways that you continue to provide encouragement and support to Sharon and me. In addition to prayers for healing, we really need prayers for insight for us and the doctors so that we can make the right treatment decisions. On Monday we hope to schedule a second opinion consultation for later in the week. Tuesday we have a follow-up appointment with the surgeon. I will post again as we learn more.