We went to yet another specialist last week who is located an hours drive from here. He is an oncologist with some sort of fame for doing some kind of thing that was extraordinary, for what it\u2019s worth, and Diana felt like he might provide us with at least some info regarding the fatigue and pain. Well that part was easy for him saying, in effect, your body is dealing with cancer (I will add it has been in some way since summer 2019) and of course you have fatigue and pain. This is only interesting in contrast to two other oncologists here who said that I should not be experiencing that level of fatigue and pain. Ah, medical science!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there were two really good things that came from that meeting. One was that he suggested that I try oral steroids, which, if you don\u2019t know, are not the same as the body building injections. Anyway these things seem to be having a noticeable effect, perhaps 10% overall betterment in both areas, which is not nothing! The other thing is that he managed to finally make it clear that getting rid of the lung cancer by way of this mild radiation strategy is dandy for the current tumors, but that my cancer is systemic and I have \u201cactivity\u201d in my liver and bone. This is good news only inasmuch as he said that he thinks that his team can whip up a type of chemo cocktail that might get rid of the cancer in my whole system, as well as a T cell and immunotherapy. IF that works, he said, IF everything goes perfectly I can be on the mend in as little as 6 months. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s nice to hear, but in my mind it puts me back to last September when the oncologists in the U.S. seemed to be suggesting the same thing, except for the T cell\/immunotherapy deal. A huge difference is that back then I really didn\u2019t care to go through that for a year or two extension on my lease, whereas having found the truly unimaginable joy of the new and vastly improved love that I have found that a year or two of this heaven seems like a great deal worth trying anything, well\u2026mostly\u2026 to stick around for each extra minute that I can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the current plan is something like wait until we hear back from dude and his team while moving forward with radiation-light in Rome and perhaps continuing on the Gerson guy here in Verona. I posted that Diana had figured out how to get me on the national health registry but the Gerson guy is not part of that deal so that is still in the many thousands of Euros a month, something that is becoming a questionable expense given the other things in the works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still given that the radiologist in Rome needed a new PET scan we went there on Monday. While we know that the health care system in the U.S. is screwed up in many ways, professionalism is not one of them. The things one goes through in order to get treatment are really haphazard (okay, like a freaking clown show most of the time) and, for one thing, we covered the same ground in the hospital, back and forth, for different reasons, when, as far as I could tell, we didn\u2019t really have to. They missed my veins 7 times before getting one on the 8th<\/sup> that worked. While I was on the platform for the PET scan, with female technicians around, a male technician comes into the room and pulls my sweats down around my knees. Good thing I don\u2019t care about such things, but, dude\u2026.really? We sat outside that area afterwards with a port in my arm for no good reason until I finally had to remind one of them that I needed that out and we had a train to catch. And I know it was for no good reason since I\u2019ve had at least 10 PET scans over the past 3 years and nobody ever had to do that, much less left me waiting until I reminded them. None of this raises to the level of a big snivel, I\u2019m just supporting my statement. Just to punctuate my point two days later the Gerson guy managed to reinsert his needle, get this, until the 12th<\/sup> effort. A rookie junkie could do better, am I right? Sheesh!<\/p>\n\n\n\n We did just get the results of the PET scan which looks pretty good but we are going to consult with one of the oncologists, probably Rome radiologist, to get her take so we don\u2019t get ahead of ourselves. Meanwhile, as I said, I\u2019m feeling a little better since the steroids and so now my good reader you are up to the minute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thanks for caring. It does mean a lot to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We went to yet another specialist last week who is located an hours drive from here. He is an oncologist with some sort of fame for doing some kind of thing that was extraordinary, for what it\u2019s worth, and Diana felt like he might provide us with at least some info regarding the fatigue and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":157,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions\/157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}