Wednesday 6 January 2016

And so it begins....Paul's date with the polo mint scanner.....and scanxiety!

Tomorrow we have an appointment at Papworth for Paul to have a CT Scan.  He last had one in May 2013 after he finished his six sessions of chemotherapy.

Since then Paul has just had x-rays on the days of his check-ups and all has been well.  At the last check-up the x-ray was checked back against one from one and two years ago and the oncologist could see no change and in fact not much, if any sign of the mesothelioma.  The oncologist was even heard to remark that did Paul actually have mesothelioma.  He also always listens to Paul's chest and he could find no problems at all.

In the past we have discussed with the oncologist the pro's and con's of x-rays versus CT scans.  We know that x-rays do not give a complete picture but we decided Paul was the best judge as to when he would need to get a complete picture of what was happening inside.  Paul has very little in the way of symptoms from the mesothelioma, fatigue being the biggest problem for him.  Everyone at Papworth has always agreed that Paul would develop more symptoms before the mesothelioma progressed too far.

In November at his check-up Paul mentioned an increase in periods of pain from his chest in the area of his surgery scar.  He therefore decided that he would like to have a CT scan to get the whole picture and since it has been well over 2 years since he last had one, his oncologist agreed.

After tomorrow we will have a wait of 2 weeks to find out the results.  We can only hope that the CT scan will confirm that things are still stable.

If they don't we know we will have a lot of difficult decisions to make.

I think both of us will be more anxious about returning to Papworth on the 21st.

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