News.

Dear reader(s),

PET results were negative. That doesn't mean there's no metastasis or no cancer, just that there's nothing big or non-papillary floating around. Two current possibilities as discussed by myself and my endocrinologist are that my TG results in the blood test were wrong or that the cancer that IS hanging around is too tiny to see with a diagnostic RAI, in which case it might get picked up when we do the higher treatment dose.

Current plan is to start RAI as soon as possible. My endo isn't sure whether she wants to give me a lower dose (150 mCi) since we don't know what's going on, or a higher one (200 mCi) that could possibly cause more long-term damage, especially to my salivary glands, but would obviously have a better chance of knocking out the disease. I'm going to deliberate with my family on that tonight, talk to her tomorrow, and probably start treatment on Thursday as long as they can schedule me in. If they give me the higher dose I could possibly be isolated for 11 days instead of 7. You can imagine how thrilled I am about that.

We're also considering - as I think I mentioned before - getting another doctor's opinion given the weird mysteriousness of my case. Actually having a sit-down appointment with another doctor could take weeks, though, and I'd have to go back on my meds and then off of them again to do treatment after that. I'm supposed to start grad school in two weeks, so that wouldn't really be a good option. On the other hand...I would like to be cautious about all this. And having a reprieve from my personal hell is obviously an attractive idea.

Anyway, that's the situation. News will be given as decisions are made. And whenever I do RAI, my faithful reader(s) will obviously get to follow along on my radioactive and probably very boring adventures. So stay tuned.

Love,
RG