My Bad -- Ixnay on the Guinea Pig

So my oncologist called today with some updates.

First up: He had submitted my paperwork to the clinical trial managers. I'd been accepted for the study and randomized -- into the control group. So no radioactive beads for me.

(If I could figure out how to get emojis into Blogger, I'd stick one of the crying ones in here.)

But that was only the start of the conversation. Apparently, before he submitted my paperwork to the study I was also on the agenda for the liver tumor committee meeting at SCCA. The liver tumor committee is where all the doctors treating various liver cancers get together and talk about the interesting cases.

I guess I'm interesting.

In any case, the tumor committee had two important points to make. First, they were less excited about the trial than my doctor was in that my tumors are actually in both lobes of my liver and they were concerned that the study would want to radiate my entire liver instead of just half, which my doc was hoping for. In this regard, then, it may be a good thing that I didn't get placed in the experimental group, since you do, in fact, need at least part of your liver to be working if you want to stay alive.

But even more intriguing, the liver surgeons apparently raised the possibility that I might be a candidate for surgery. Yay! I would much rather have the cancer cut out of me than to have them try to kill it with radiation or more toxic chemicals. Surgery wasn't fun, but it was way (way, way) better than chemo. If my life can be extended with surgery, than I'm all for it. Until now I've always been told I was not a candidate for surgery. If this is now an option, that counts as good news in my book.

Of course, nothing is that simple. As my oncologist explained it, to qualify for surgery I first have to undergo a PET scan that will determine if surgery is an immediate possibility, not a possibility at all, or possible only after a positive response to further chemo. Further complicating things, the PET scan and diabetes don't easily mesh. If my blood sugars aren't under very tight control when the radiologists go to scan me, they won't proceed with my scan.* Now my blood sugars are never under tight control; if I get good readings it's the result of chance as much as "control". That said, I'm not above staying up all night measuring my blood sugar every hour and taking food or insulin as necessary to ensure I can get scanned. It sounds good in theory anyway,

So that's the update for today. I don't get to play guinea pig, but if the stars align I may be able to trade killing the tumors with radiation and chemicals for cutting them out with a knife.

I've always liked knives...


* When I asked the doctor who diagnosed my diabetes what that meant, the first thing he told me was that my life expectancy just dropped by fifteen years. I'm not sure preventing a potential cancer treatment was what he meant, but wouldn't it be ironic if that's how it turned out?