So Now You Will Know What I Know

December 10th's CT scan showed no change. No growth! YAY! Unable to tell for sure if/how the last (and final) chemoembolization did was it was supposed to do because part of the liver is still too swollen. We'll look again in February/March.
Making an appointment with Dr. G who did the aforementioned procedure in order to get his thoughts on its outcome and if/when to do the RFA ("berry picking") procedure on the "little guys" on the right lobe.
While he was "in there" performing the chemoembo, he told us (later) that he noticed quite a lot of necrotic tissue on and within the tumor. This is good. This means the chemo is working; not by moving it or pulling it away from anywhere in particular anymore or shrinking it but it is killing it. Sure, walking around with a dead tumor in me doesn't sound like fun but as long as I keep up with the chemo treatments, I keep killing more and more of it until someone goes in there to take a closer look to determine just how much of the tumor is dead and/or turned to scar tissue so that they can then CUT IT OUT! Doc says this will probably take several more months. But it is by far the BEST damn news I've heard with regards to this tumor since November 16, 2007 (the day before diagnosis)!

I expressed my biggest fear to Kane: that if the chemo embo didn't work, then we'll be out of options from now on. She assured me easily by saying, "We're never going to run out of options. We'll always find something new to try if we need to." Whew.

I'm a little hesitant to completely believe that that's exactly how things will play out and such but I'm also just trying to let it sink in slowly into my consciousness to make sure it's real. Did she really say all that? Or was that when I was doing all the talking and just asking her to agree or disagree or re-clarify? And if that's the case, how much of it is really REAL?

Stop. All of those questions are just as detrimental to my psyche as the horrid "What If...?" Game! No second guessing. Just try to understand and continue to plug on through chemotherapy as best as possible. (BTW, thank you, doc, for the Marinol script! Finally!)

If I could find my digital audio recorder since the move, I would prefer to take that to my doctor visits so I can review what all she says after my 20 minutes are up and I'm out the door! I'll dig deeper before next appointment.

So now you know most of what I know. (You don't get to know all of what I know! Some of it is private only for me, Honey and direct parental-units to know - please don't go trying to drag any more out of them now!). I think the fighting is starting to show signs of paying off!