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.

He seems to feel that that will likely not be the case and this will turn out to just be "regular" neuroendocrine cancer of the bone. He said that chemo and radiation would not be the first course of treatment at this time. The tumors secrete hormones into the body since they are endocrine in nature. He said the course will be to try a medicine called octreatide to stop these secretions. He says it's sort of a backward engineering and the thinking is that by stopping the secretions, the tumors are affected and should hopefully shrink.

So short-term I have finished the octreatide scan and his office is scheduling me for an upper endoscopy. I meet with the doctor next Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. for a follow up appointment.

The doctor was not as optimistic on long-term prognosis as previous doctors have been. He indicated that we should take this "one day at a time" and that I had a "very long road ahead". He says that this form is not as treatable as we had been led to believe by others. That was disheartening to say the least. I find that difficult to believe based on everything I've read and what the other doctors have said.

I do not accept this prognosis. I intend definitely to get a second opinion from an independent source. I also believe that I serve a miracle-working God. I believe His report above that of any doctor. I will fight this with His help for as long as it takes. The power of life or death is not in the hands of cancer, but in the hands of the Lord, and I believe He still has work for me to do on this earth. This will be a marathon not a sprint, and I'm happy to have Cindy my "marathon buddy" with me and God with me as well as knowing I have the love, support, and prayers of so many of you and others all over the world. I am blessed.