Meagan will eat well today, because she is fasting from 8:00pm tonight. Tomorrow is the full meal deal, CT and PET scan. Nothing like a barium cocktail for breakfast and radioactive sugar in the veins to perk you up!
We get the results Wednesday at our oncologist visit - we've learned the lesson - have a day in between so the full radiologist report is in the computer when we meet with our oncologist. We are expecting growth in existing tumors - because we can see and feel the skin level ones, but hopefully not much growth internally (the ones on her lungs) and no more spreading. That kind of report would lead us on to the next treatment. That will either be Interleukin 2 here in Seattle, which is the treatment that could be done the soonest, or back in Bethesda at the National Cancer Institute at the National Institute of Health [NIH], if we can wait until late May (have to try to make Riley's graduation May 15th) after may 1st. We will likely fly to Bethesda ASAP to get an assessment by them and figure out which, if any, clinical trial would make the most sense.
The clinical trials we'd be up for aren't randomized - so we'd know she'd be getting some form of treatment. They are testing dosage, delivery mechanism, safety and efficacy. It's a question of which treatment, based on her gene type, and balancing our need for efficacy and highest degree of probable success, with their need to recruit patients into the various trials they have going. That's why we'll use our oncologist to do the sanity check once we get the preference from the NIH.
It is going to be a very interesting next couple months, especially if the treatment(s) (yes, there could be more than one over time back there) are moving to a very different arrangement. I shudder to think of all the logistics we are going to have to pull together. I know we'll figure it out - after all it is part of the cabana boys job description - but it's likely going to be lots of overtime!
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