Scan on Monday

I wanted to give you all a quick update. After I wrote a rather distraught e-mail to George about my concerns, he called me back and said the following:

1. No need to jump off a bridge. He told me to stop panicking until we know what we're dealing with. He said that the CEA is just a number and is used to determine when to do a CT scan. He does believe that the heightened CEA means that the cancer is active, but we still don't know what it's doing.

2. Get a CT scan. Before determining treatment, he said that we need to get a CT scan to see what's going on inside of me. He said that we're not going to start shooting until we see "the whites of their eyes..." He doesn't want to unnecessarily use up weapons in our arsenal if we can save them until later.

3. We always expected the number to go up, we just were hoping that it I would have more time before it went up. But, it is what it is and soon we'll know what it means.

So - on Monday, I head to Stanford to get the scan. I will be meeting with George on March 5 to discuss treatment options. I am also in the process of determining if I should get second opinions from other major cancer centers (Block Center, MD Anderson, Dana Farber or Sloan Kettering). Unfortunately, none of my chemo options are very appealing.

Last Tuesday, when I got the call from Garrett, I was devastated. Pat told me that while I could be sad on Tuesday, on Wednesday, I had to get my game face on and get back up ready to fight. While it took me a couple more days than he had hoped, I'm feeling centered once again and ready to jump back into cancer destroying mode.