God wants you to keep praying for me!

Dr. Chen is out of the office for vacation today but the results to my PET scan were in.  In fact, I was that patient who called at 7:59, got the answering service, waited until 8:02 and called again.  "Oh hi Andrew!  Yes let me check if the results are in. (pause) ..... just give me a second my computer is still booting up."  Yup, that's me.  Don't worry, I did apologize for calling so immediately and being such a pest.  But honestly, I was doing completely fine with the test and with the results one way or another.  What made me most anxious in the last 24-hours were all those who kept asking "what are the results?" "how was the test?" "do you know anything yet?"  Now don't get me wrong, I love, appreciate, and am humbled by the support.  Your comments didn't upset me at all.  It just got me thinking more about wanting the results NOW.

Since Dr. Chen was out, I gave him permission to have Dr. Nguyen give me a call to review things with me.  The ideal news would have been that I never needed the PET.  However, after needing the PET we got the news we wanted to hear.  It is what I'm classifying as a mixture of "good news" and "wait and see news".  Here is why:

There was an elevated level in the thymus in my PET.  This means that on the screen the thymus "glowed" as a result of the radioactive glucose that they gave me.  Also, as was discovered in the CT, it is slightly enlarged.  Because there wasn't cancer in the thymus before, they don't think it is anything to be concerned about and doesn't warrant a biopsy (needle biopsy wouldnt give enough of a sample and not worth cracking my sternum open).  Rather, they recommend we keep and eye on it and see what it looks like at my 6 month check-up (which is 6 months from last treatment - 3 months from now).  This is classified as Thymus Rebound.

Thymus Rebound can happen to patients after undergoing great levels of stress to the immune system (i.e. getting poisoned for 6 months).  When you are an infant, the thymus serves as the immune system.  As you grow older and your body's immune system is developed the thymus slows down and basically serves no purpose.  When the chemo beat up my immune system and damaged my marrow the thymus starts back into activity assuming it needs to pick up the slack.  Because it starts working again, it increases in size and requires more glucose to work (which is why it glows on the PET).  The PET picks up the activity and can't differentiate between a recurrence and thymus rebound.  The younger you are, the more likely it is for this to happen.  Dr. Nguyen actually said I'm "old" so it was a bit more surprising, but still an acceptable response. 

So from here we "wait and see" in 3 months.  I'm much more at ease now, and I'm fine putting the guns of battle back into the holster and not title myself a "2 Time Cancer Survivor" at this point.  Instead I'm going to try and be more diligent with what I do.  Keep up the exercise and cycling.  Try to be more diligent of taking my multivitamin, flax seed (anti-inflammatory), and vitamin-D (immune system booster).  I'm also going to be even more conscious of what I eat as I haven't been as good as I would have liked.  Time to decrease the white flour more, decrease the sugar intake, do better at eliminating other inflammatory foods such as red meat.  In fact, if I can convince Sarah I think it's worth embracing the grassroots movement of Meatless Mondays and I encourage you to do the same.  Going meatless once a week may reduce your risk of chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. It can also help reduce your carbon footprint and save precious resources like fresh water and fossil fuel.  You can learn more at meatlessmonday.org. 


Below is a clip that I found on the thymus and thymic rebound. 


The thymus is a lymphoid organ in the anterior mediastinum. In general as you get older, it gets smaller. With chemotherapy or radiotherapy, the thymus shrinks. This is normal. After chemotherapy or radiation therapy, the normal thymus recovers. As it does so, sometimes its even larger than normal for a while. It can show up on CT scan and on PET or PET CT scan. This is normal, healthy, sign of recovery. The only danger is when the changes in the scan are misinterpreted as relapse.

Keep praying, ride safe, and LIVESTRONG!

Let's keep working to one day think of TEAM 28 as the past and embrace TEAM 0!