In Limbo

It has felt like a long week, and it just got a bit longer. Thanksgiving last week was excellent, except for the puking, coughing, and nose blowing that my family and I had to live through. It wasn't just me...but everybody at my parent's house got sick. It was still a good time to be around family, but it could have been a lot better.
Moving on to this week, I finally had my last day at work on Wednesday. With my cold in full effect, I felt drained going to work. However, I was determined to work these last three days. Its not quite sad to be leaving work for an undetermined amount of time, but more frustrating. I won't mind the break from working all day while going through chemotherapy. That was tough. However, not knowing when I'll be back annoys me. I received a lot of love from my coworkers this week, which is always reassuring. I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall to see the chaos that might go on in my class when I'm not there. Hopefully for everyone involved it will be minimal.

So today was a long day at NIH with a PET scan, several other tests, and my clinic appointment. Usually NIH has been very efficient in terms of appointments, but today we had to wait longer than we would have liked. Some excellent news surely would have cheered my parents, Kate, and I up, but thats not quite what we got. The doctors shared that their was some increased intensity where the lesions in my chest previously were. What this means is that its possible the tumor has changed or is just not responding to chemotherapy like it was before. The cancer may be growing again, which obviously would not be a good thing. If this is the case, I would not be eligible for the bone marrow study right now. However, the doctors will not be sure if the tumor cells are growing until they see the results of a CT scan. I have a CT scan tommorow, and will meet with the transplant doctor to discuss what he sees late in the morning.
So the bone marrow transplant is not officially off, but its in doubt. We should know for sure whether or not it will happen in the near future by tommorow afternoon.

If the transplant is out of the picture for now, one of the doctors did have an idea for an experimental treatment that is taking place outside of NIH. So its good to know that the docs are thinking about other options. My mood right now is frustrated. The most emotionally difficult thing about my cancer experience is that when we have thought everything was figured out, plans seem to often change. So Kate and I aren't feeling down right now. Its obviously tough that things aren't going as we thought they would, but we just have to do whatever is best for my long term health.

I'll probably update the blog tommorow with information about the CT scan. Right now it is just time for more prayers and positive thoughts before the rest of our path is unveiled to us.