Can you believe it I finally get to the surgeon and I can't find my lump! the hard core has disappeared again and the soft squashy tissue isn't squashy. I don't know whether its because my Doc is (in my opinion) one that gets your heart rate going or the healing did a damn good job.
The lump does move and after forcing a few coughs it came up and down from the ribs, Aha lung tissue being forced by underlying meso. Can't do it and this is why:
To remove the meso would mean cutting away alot of healthy tissue to ensure it was clean, because of its situation part of my rib and muscle would need to come out too. A lot of pain to follow and another year for the body to adapt. Then, once in how far does the meso go, if the lung needs cutting then serious risks of it not repairing, its close to the air leak and fluid department which makes even more complications. Hence, unless the lump explodes and goes red and sore and weeps it stays where it is.
At least explained in nice normal understandable terms. I do feel helpless and left to ransom with this cancer though. We talked about the other tumours, not so much the tumours but procedures to remove them. Cryo although good at freezing, not proven as a procedure here, like thermal can explode and kill the tumour, but what about the outlying damage around the tumour it causes. Everytime I stick something into the lung it leaves scarring, increases the risk of collapse completely or another lung disease. Radiotherapy needs a decent sized target to ensure it doesn't damage other tissue. The waste of the cells gets washed away in your blood, the hope, although not proven, is that it triggers something in the immune that suddenly sees what a cancer cell is and stops helping them for a while.
I apologise if my doc reads this and I haven't understood it correctly!
The progression at the mo is slow, does that make me feel any better, no as I was looking for something the other morning and I found a report from the radiologist in 07 which said something along the lines of although progression was stable and slow in 06 within the last 3 months the disease has become aggressive.
I know my name has been put forward for any trials that may pop up, but hubby isn't keen on this idea. The meeting was also interesting because I do expect to much from my body. When you have an operation you expect to feel better the next day because you have got rid of the symptoms, although after the problems I have had with surgery over the years I should know better. But cutting into the chest region takes an awful long time to recover (not the few months I pushed myself into), meso causes a lot of pain naturally - for some reason it always finds nerves to sit on and muscles to grow from. The lung is simply covered in nerves and anything that doesn't belong keeps sending alarm bells to the brain which in turn makes it pain. Then there's the additional fighting going on within the body, making us tried, other organs don't get as much protection because our immune system is busy working in our chest, it goes on and on.
Each person I know is looking for something that can help them, and the rest of us. Again with meso what works with one seems to have no effect on another, hence the trials never get the results because overall it isn't a benefit to the masses.
All I can do now is hope that the meso doesn't grow (likely chance of that happening) or when it gets to 2cm I get them blown apart and my body picks up being a garbage man and clears the rest away.
Oh and believe it or not but the scan arrived about 3pm on Friday, just as we got home!
No walking for me and the dogs today either, the wind out there is terrible so guess its a day in the house and the dogs in a sulk with their mother! Enjoy your day
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