The Verdict is In

Thursday was quite a day. Caren and I left for the IU Hospital at about 11:00 - stopping for our "drive drinks" of a large Diet Coke for Caren, and a BK Iced Mocha Java for me. We did not realize at the time that we would end up at the hospital for most of the afternoon.

We met with Dr. Beck at 1:00. About 24 hours earlier, Leon's incision started bleeding a little - no other problem at all during the whole time since surgery, but since I was going to the doctor, the Ghost of Leon had to make his presence known. As soon as I dropped my boxers (a nice blue number by the way), Dr. Beck went, "Oh My!" and grabbed a box of gauze bandages. He took off our gauze bandage, squeezed the incision, told us that is was just blood and there was no infection, and we should just let it be. He and Caren bandaged me up with a gauze bandage about an inch thick and that was that, and on to other things. Dr. Beck did grab some big boxes of gauze, handed them to Caren, and said, "Shove these in your bag and sneak them out of here. The nurses hate it when I do this with the supplies, so hide 'em good!" Then it was time to address the real issue of our visit.

Dr. Beck said the pathology report from Leon’s autopsy was as good as one of those things can be. In men my age (41), Leon is usually made up almost exclusively of a very “bad” type of cell and just a little bit of “good cells.” It turns out that Leon was just the opposite – 90% good cells and 10% bad cells. Of course, the word “good” is relative. Good is bad, but just a little, teeny-tiny bit. He said this is a good indication that things are in Stage I. However, he cautioned, we would not know for certain until I had my blood test followed by the CT scan. So some of my blood was taken, then it was off to have the CT scan.

We had to be there at 2:00 to start the drinking of the contrast solution. The contrast solution was not as bad as I expected. It was sort of like fruit punch with a real bad aspartame aftertaste – and I drank a fourth of the GIGANTIC cup every half hour. Then off to have the CT scan. That was fine until they injected me with the radioactive dye and started sliding me through the big tube (I believe that is the medical term for the CT machine, I am not certain). When they began injecting it, a very hot feeling went through my body. After about a minute of that, I thought I was going to be ill, but just as I thought I was going to lose it – the feeling went away, and that was it. Whew! I had a vision of this multi-million dollar machine covered with my Big Gulp sized remnants of bright red Kool-Aid! What sort of freaked me out and fascinated me at the same time was that just as quickly as the hot feeling went through my body, it was gone, and I felt totally fine! Ahhh, the wonders of nuclear medicine! That was it, and Caren and I were free to go.

We managed to time things perfectly to hit downtown Indianapolis traffic right at 5:02 PM, and the rush hour crush was on! We made it through downtown Indy on Meridian Street. For people unfamiliar with Indianapolis, Meridian was probably designed originally for one lane of traffic each way with lots of room to spare. Now it has two lanes of traffic each way and absolutely no room to spare. So you are zipping through traffic going 45 M.P.H. packed like sardines. When had no problems (primarily because I was driving and my afternoon medication was kicking in), and when we reached the northern most point of Indy, we stopped at Don Pablo’s because we were, as Caren said, "So hungry she was about to be Miss Cranky Pants." If she was close to being Miss Cranky Pants, that meant I was close to being Mr. Grumpy Grump, so Miss Cranky Pants and Mr. Grumpy Grump went in, ordered our drinks, and as soon as the tortilla chips arrived, we devoured them like a pit bull on a slow moving mailman. Caren ordered her usual spicy Chicken Caesar salad and I ordered the left side of the menu. Actually since I know my band teacher friend will read this, I need to say that I ordered "El Conquistador!" Having written that, I should now apologize to his wife, as he will now walk around the house saying, "El Conquistador!" repeatedly in a slightly cute but oddly Rain Man-ish way. After a wonderful dinner, we headed home - with much less traffic on the roads I might add.

Now all we had to do was wait for the results of the tests.

While we would have liked Dr. Beck to call at 7:01 in the morning, we knew he had surgery, and I had a conference call with the U.S. Department of Education from 10:00 to 12:00, so Dr. Beck was accommodating and worked with our schedule and he called Friday afternoon.

And, just as he said he would, Dr. Beck called with the results of all my tests Friday afternoon. My blood work indicated that the level of a certain marker (a particular protein level that they watch) had gone from 40 with Leon in me to a 2 with Leon gone. This was good news. Then he went on to tell me that the lymph nodes on my left side (Leon's side) were abnormally large. He said that usually this is bad, but after consulting with his pals at the hospital (his words, not mine) they decided that I just had unusually large lymph nodes for some reason. Of course, I hope Dr. Beck's pals were doctors and not the cleaning crew or the person running the coffee kiosk or something.

So what does this all mean?

It means that I am what is known as Clinical Stage I. For now, the removal of Leon got rid of all the cancer. For the next year, I will go to the IU Hospital each month and have a chest x-ray, CT scan, blood work, and meet with Dr. Beck. Then after the first year, I will go down to IU Hospital for the same battery of tests, only every other month or so. Once I make it through the two years, we will decide how often I go for tests after that. The reason for all of this is that out of 100 patients, 70 of them will have no other relapse - ever - and, obviously, 30 of them will. Of the 30 who do relapse, 28 of them will relapse within the first two years after surgery, and the majority of those will be during the first year. That is why Dr. Beck will monitor me closely over the next few years.

While not 100% perfect news, it is pretty darn close to perfect. One thing that made this very easy to go through, was the support I received from all of you. That made these past few weeks not so bonkers.

Do not think that this will be last of my musings here. I have rather liked doing this. Maybe I will have to come up with a new name (feel free to send in your submissions to rickett@educationalfutures.org) - and just write about what is going on in my life, not that many people would care. Nevertheless, I guarantee there will be a health update once a month, as I think we all owe it to Leon!