Wow, what a roller-coaster ride!  So, as of getting the “hot spot report” Tuesday from Monday’s PET/CT scan, here was the plan:

• check into Los Robles Tues evening to get prepped for biopsy ASAP (I’m in room 2140)
  • [insert nasty night of pain-sans-sleep here, followed by increasingly nasty wait for biopsy]
• get biopsy tissue extracted Weds AM (successful biopsy was performed around 12-2 on Weds after a few delays…)
  • [insert the its-ok-if-it-never-happens-again experience of biopsy-induced intense nerve pain here]
• start steroid treatment to reduce pressure on the nerve (and hopefully improve chance of foot recovery  – but needed to get biopsy before doing this)
  • [insert installation of new chemo port here…that includes the gracious services of a properly enthusiastic anesthesiologist who kept her promise that I’d wake at a more tolerable pain level than I had before she put me to sleep]
    • …of course, I just had my old chemo port removed…my celebration of being clean for over a year and thinking I didn’t have to keep thinking of my life in terms of cancer any more 😦

And that is where I’m at now – all set for next chemo attack and feeling about 100x better than a few hours ago pain/comfort-wise.  My visitors’ timing was impeccable – they swung by just as I was becoming “human” again for the first time in about 24 hours.

NEXT:

• get confirmation that hot-spots are indeed Lymphoma
• begin a R-ICE chemo regimen (a different regimen is called for on relapse)
• get back more detailed pathology of the Lymphoma
• adjust chemo regimen as appropriate based on specific cell typing

So, I’ll be  here probably through Sunday, and then back for a few days each 2 weeks for a few cycles.  This is all basically in preparation for an autologous stem cell transplant procedure that would follow chemo.  We’re just starting to research this part, so the details will come later.