More Information

Tidbits of information keep trickling in. I find it all a bit overwhelming again, but less so than last time around...for now, anyhow.

I have been advised of an important correction: my mother's father died of colon cancer at age 43, not age 40. :) This makes me feel confident that I will get to celebrate my own fortieth birthday! (Perhaps even my fiftieth...)

The plan that NCI has for me right now is to do an entire work up on me. I am going to have blood work and a CT with contrast (so I have to take prednisone for the 24 hours prior) on Monday, and meet with the oncologist and have the colonoscopy on Tuesday. If necessary, I could also have an endoscopy and even do the procedure where you swallow a little camera at NCI. My team there intends to "package" me, so that when I walk into the office of the oncologist to whom I go next, all the necessary tests will have been done. The NCI onc(ologist) says that the standard of care treatment for colon cancer (which it is not entirely clear I have, more in a minute about that) is chemotherapy, so it looks like I will be doing chemo again starting the first week of January. The NCI onc says that with colon cancer they try to just have you live on chemo, so this will be a long haul (with scheduled breaks). All those of you who are near enough in location will probably get a request to help with house sitting in Tennessee at some point! :D

I asked that the onc read the pathology report to me over the phone yesterday and here's what it says (in part): "while mucinous adeno may be primary in lung it is rare, staining is not consistent with lung. It is consistent with intestinal." I clung to that last word and asked the onc for clarification. He agreed that the path report is indeed not narrowing the source of the primary down to the colon, and that is why I may in fact end up having an endoscopy if no lesion is found during the colonoscopy.

He also said that the fact that I am asymptomatic does not mean much and that I do not behave like a person who has cancer of indeterminate primary. (I did not ask what that would be like, just accepted his opinion that I am not doing that, whatever it is.)