It was all such a whirlwind. The morning after the scans, I go in for the results, and the first question I get from Dr. Meyers was, "Did you have an infection recently?" He then pointed to an enlarged lymph node in my left lung that lit up on the PET scan. There were also a few other tiny lung spots that showed up there and on my chest CT. An infection was his and my hope, given the alternative. The only thing that came to mind was a cold I'd had in late December/early January. At that time, I was given two options: wait and re-scan in 6 weeks to see if anything changed, or do a biopsy and find out now. Not in the mood to wait, I went for option 2.
The procedure was straightforward -- the general surgeon with the pediatric oncology group at Sloan, Dr. La Quaglia, took a piece of the lymph node and a small piece of my left lung as well. He was able to use a scope, which enabled a quick recovery. The alternative, if using a scope didn't work, was working through an incision, in which case I might still be in the hospital recovering instead of writing this post!
The pathology report isn't back yet, but I got the preliminary news right after I woke up. Dr. La Quaglia told me that there were small round blue cells in the biopsy sample. Given that Ewing's sarcoma is one of the small round blue cell tumors, that meant we were almost certainly looking at a recurrence. I say almost certainly, because there is some super small (something like 0.000001%) chance that this is actually another kind of small round blue cell tumor such as a lymphoma. Small enough not to be worth mentioning except that I had such small odds of having cancer back in 2012 when I was first diagnosed that I wouldn't be surprised by the unexpected.
Dr. Meyers met me as I was being wheeled into my hospital room to get moving on exploring treatment options. Chemo is one possibility, but given how much of it I received in 2013, there's the worry of resistance, so he's also looking at trials that involve vaccines or drugs that stimulate an immune response against tumors. We last spoke yesterday; he told me he was still investigating, and that I should for the moment go home, as I was sufficiently healed and capable of resuming my normal life. I'll hear from him when the pathology report is in and when he's finished looking at options. I don't know where treatment will be or how disruptive it will be to my daily routine, but here's hoping for something that is not too disruptive and also in Northern California.
I was able to find a reasonably priced flight that left New York late in the afternoon, so I headed back home and resumed work this morning. It's an eerie feeling, though, knowing what's inside me. I have no symptoms now, but if I do nothing, they'll eventually develop and intensify and, well, I don't want to go there. I'm doing my best to think happy thoughts. Hopefully whatever second-line treatment I pursue ends up working.
