I had my PET scan today, and because Dr. Hart wanted the results available for the Siteman Center in St. Louis Tuesday, they read the scan and I was able to pickup up a disc to take with us. There were no surprises, everything that had shown up on the previous MRI showed up on the PET, but nothing new. Good news! There is a "new" lesion on he right hip, that I don't think I'd mentioned earlier. The doctors had mentioned it as an area to watch on the MRI, but I don't remember anyone actually saying it was a lesion. A little denial maybe?

I was fitted for a back brace Monday to support the T-12 area. I'm not happy about it at all, but I'm wearing it almost as much as the neurosurgeon requested. It's much larger than I'd expected, but the original brace they were going to fit for me was even larger with a big metal brace in front that would've restricted a lot of movement. I probably wouldn't have been able to drive, so I guess what I have isn't all bad.

Dr. Hart shared a story with me this afternoon about my first PET scan that had shown spots in my lungs, but nothing in the lungs showed on any MRI's. There was a nationally known PET scan expert lecturing in the area and one of the topics was some rare false positives. The head PET scan guy at St. Luke's shared my history with him, and it turns out my case is classic for the false positives. They gave the lecturer all my scans, etc. and I'm going to be in the medical journals. At least I'll be famous for a false positive and not the other way around!

We leave for the Siteman Cancer Center late Monday afternoon. I'll start with lab work around 7:00 a.m. Tuesday, meet with the doctor at 8:00, then I'm scheduled for a bone marrow biopsy at 9:30. Not sure what the rest of the day will hold, but if I get morphine for the biopsy I probably won't care! We're looking forward to hopefully getting some consensus on a treatment plan and getting it started.