Follicular Lymphoma!!!!!!!

As you may have noticed, we have not been posting as often as we did last year.  We have been a little worried and preoccupied!  We think now is a good time to let everyone know what we have been up to the last 6 months or so!!!  Before we went to Ohio last fall we had an appointment with our oncologist.  Dr. Schewe saved George's life 8 years ago and has been following him all these years.  He did a PET scan on George in August and found something very small but alarming.  He did not know if it was a non Hodgkin's lymphoma or a virus.  He suggested that we come back in December for another PET scan and see what that scan would tell us.  The December scan showed that there were now two growths, one in the abdomen and one in the chest cavity.  Dr. Schewe referred George to one of the best chemo oncologist in the Denver area, Dr. Bergen.  Dr. Bergen wasted no time and scheduled both a needle biopsy and bone biopsy to be performed the next week.  The needle biopsy would be used in conjunction with a CAT scan to pinpoint the exact lymph node.  But the Intervention Radiologist (IR) would not take a chance once he saw where the lymph node was - one was on the liver and one was on the aorta.  The problem was that his other organs were in the way and he could reach the lymph nodes with a needle.  So we proceeded with the bone scan, it was successful.  Not deterred, Dr. Bergen knew the best IR specialist in Denver, contacted him and ask him to look over all the PET and CAT scans and see if he could do a needle biopsy.  Dr. Lenoni looked at everything and said let's do it!  He was successful - so now we had two biopsies.  Unfortunately, the needle biopsy was not conclusive (too much junk in the node), the bone biopsy found no cancer in the bone marrow.  Dr. Bergen asked the top surgeon in Denver, Dr. Jeff Cross if he would look at doing a surgical biopsy.  We met with Dr. Cross and he said he would do it but no promises, he said sometimes lymphomas were just too hard to diagnosis and results were inconclusive in small nodes.  January 25th, George had his chest surgery.  Dr. Cross cut 4 holes about an 1 1/2" each in his side for his camera and equipment, a larger hole in his back for the chest tube, he deflated his left lung and cut out a lymph node about the size of the top of your thumb.  George is still recovering from the surgery but is getting better everyday.  The biopsy had to be sent to a special lab out of state and Dr. Cross called us tonight with the results.  It was follicular lymphoma!!!  We have an appointment on February 2 with Dr. Bergen to find out the path forward.  We will continue to update you on George's progress but we are very hopeful now!

So what is this follicular lymphoma?  Well we know it is stage III because it is above and below the diaphragm.  We know it is not an aggressive lymphoma because it has not spread that fast.  So what do we know... well we have done a lot of research since August and we think that given that George has cancer this may be the best news we could have received at this point!  If it is a small cell follicular cancer it will be slow moving, in fact they might decide not to do anything yet!  They may wait until he has symptoms such as night sweats, enlarged lymph nodes in the groin, neck or under arms, or any of the other symptoms associated with this type of cancer.  That is called a "wait and see" treatment.  Or they may decide to have George start on a chemo regime.  Since he still does not have any symptoms we will let the doctors tell us the path forward.

We want our friends and family know a couple things.  We have the best team of doctors looking after George, they are all at the top of their specialties.  This type of lymphoma is the easiest to cure with a 70% survival rate after 10 years.   We caught this early (before any symptoms) because of Dr. Schewe and his diligence in following George for eight years.  Also Pat's cousin, Mildred, had the same cancer 16 years ago and she is doing great, (also want to thank her for the information she gave us back in December).  There was also a small group of family and friends who have known about this since December and we want to thank them for their prayers and thoughts.  We also asked them not to spread the word until we knew more of what was going on with George and now want to thank them for keeping this to themselves.

So there you have it --- everything that we know about this Non Hodgkin's Follicular Lymphoma.  Of course you can research it and see if we missed anything but for now we are pretty happy with the outcome (if you can be happy with cancer) and optimistic about the future.

Cancer or not we will continue to explore our backyard (this world), we will continue to enjoy life as if there is not tomorrow, and we hope you all are doing the same!  Remember -- Life is good - don't waste it!