A Friend's Second Opinion

I have a doctor friend whose specialty overlaps with Enrique's condition.

When I mentioned Enrique's lung nodule (and its small size) he said he was surprised they had even bothered to tell us about it.

"That's so small. They feel obligated to tell you about it because of his history of cancer - but its unlikely they're worried about it."

That explained why no one had, in fact, told us about the nodule for six months.

Perhaps it's better to learn about it today. Now, we're closer to the May scans which will let us know if the nodule is changing or growing. Instead of extra worrying, we've been ignorant of it until now - focusing on the area we knew was cancerous.

Is Delay A Good Thing?

When Enrique was first diagnosed everything happened very quickly. A biopsy, then a scan all happened in a short period of time. The doctors worked hard to squeeze in appointments and see him immediately.

That was great, but we also took it as a sign of the seriousness of his condition.

This time around instead of getting a scan immediately; he'll need to wait until the end of May. I'm taking that as a good sign that nothing needs to be done urgently.

I hope my optimism is well placed.

No News Was Good News

It's been a couple of months since I have posted to the blog and that was a good thing.

Enrique is in good health, he's back at work and life feels normal.

In the past month we've started doing normal things and seeing friends again regularly (though we still have a backlog of folks we haven't seen in months).

He has no diet restrictions anymore and is taking a much smaller set of medications. His blood tests show that his parathryroid glands are functioning close to normal - which means that he should be able to come off his calcium and vitamin supplments soon.

The whole experience began to feel distant; as though we'd just read a story about someone getting cancer. I often thought I should login just to end the blog and say goodbye.

Unfortunately, today Enrique got two pieces of news from his endocrinologist that weren't necessarily bad - but aren't good either.

His blood tests show that he still has some thyroid tissue active in his body; this means he'll need to have a couple of full body scans (in late May) so they can get a better look at what's going on.

There's a chance that the thyroid tissue that remains simply hasn't died yet: the radiation treatment can take several months to take full effect. The other possibility is that he'll require another round of radiation treatment. No has yet mentioned another surgery. They felt for lumps in his neck and found none.

The second piece of news is that one of his previous scans detected a nodule on one of his lungs. Apparently these aren't uncommon and is just something to watch. This nodule was first detected six months ago and we just learned about it today. It's not clear why.

So, it's a sobering set of news. But there's every reason to hope that everything will turn out ok.

In any case, it's time to fire up the old blog again.