Braaaaaiiiiiiins..... Part Two

See where the mouse arrow is on that screenshot? That's a tumor that is outside of the spinal cord but inside the dura. It is very close to where the whole brain radiation (WBR) from last fall stopped, and the radiologist's fear is that the spinal cord it is pressing against may have received some radiation before and that hitting it with more radiation now could cause some sort of damage. Like paralysis from the neck down damage. So they're going to dose her with another round of chemo again, which they couldn't do for her brain tumors because chemo can't go through the dura. Am I the only one who hears that and thinks that the chemo won't affect this spinal tumor because it's inside the dura? Well apparently none of the medical people nor my mom think it means that so I suppose I'll defer to the oncologist if I must. But either way, remission is over.

A good Mom update

My mom's post-chemo pet scan results came back and she has no visible cancer in her at all. This is small-cell cancer so she has to amass a pretty big grouping of cells for it to even show up, so the odds are very much in favor of her having cancer still inside her.  But she has less than she did when this whole mess started, so that's good. The bad, though, is that this is a very very fast-spreading cancer. And if the chemo every 3 weeks has been keeping it in check, it could just go nuts and run rampant now that chemo's over. I need to find out when her next scan is, or blood test, or how they're going to monitor this to know when/if to do more chemo.  I'm hesitantly optimistic, but still scared shitless.  This isn't like breast cancer, where you can beat it. This will kill her (unless she gets hit by a bus first or something); it is terminal and the very fact that it spread to her brain makes it stage 4- the worst.  But for right now, she's healthier than she was 6 months ago and that is great.