Cancer update - 10/20

I had the last part of my octreatide scan today and my first meeting with the medical oncologist. The scans took a long time but were not a big deal.

The doctor wants to run some more tests against the biopsy samples. A lot of what he said was medical gobbledygook that I didn't fully follow, but essentially. he wants to run what he called a "c-kit" test to determine if the type of neuroendocrine tumors I have may be either something called GIST (which I looked up and it stands for Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor) which is treatable and to eliminate myeloid leukemia as a possibility. Since my white counts have all been normal, I don't see how the latter could be possible. He wants to run some special blood tests that tests for certain "exons". He said an exon is a section of a gene. Since cancer is a cell mutation, if certain exons are the mutated ones, that indicates GIST. He also wants me to have an upper endoscopy done to check for GIST.

Cancer update - 10/16

Well I finally got an appointment with the medical oncologist scheduled for Tuesday, October 20 at 9:00 a.m. in Gainesville.

Cancer update - 10/5

My dad and I went to see the gastroenterology oncologist today. He says that since neuroendocrine tumors are metastatic by nature, our first course of action is to identify the primary source. This is usually the last part of the small intestine, but it can be elsewhere in the GI tract or on the lungs. I need to have an octreatide scan to help identify this. He says in some cases, the primary source is never identified, but that generally in those cases, chemotherapy would affect the primary source. If the octreatide scan reveals nothing, then a colonoscopy will be ordered. I had one back in January 2008 that showed nothing, but he said something could have come up since then. I've had some colon issues recently so that he said that he may elect to do the colonoscopy anyway even if the octreatide scan shows up something. He's not sure.