The Testing Is Over

So after 5 weeks of testing and waiting, and testing and waiting, and meetings we finally have a final diagnosis and a preliminary plan of attack.  Oh, I am still in the hospital this evening, just resting up and trying to recover from my procedure yesterday.

Yesterday, during the procedure to lift my ovaries the doctor also did a check of the lymph nodes in the lower abdomen.  And after meeting with the radiologist this afternoon, It turns out that the lowest lymph node was swollen so the oncologist took that one out immediately and then took tissue samples from the other four.  The swollen lymph node turned out to be cancerous, which is not good, but the other 4 lymph nodes came back clean, which is good.  The radiologist said the good thing about cervical cancer is that although it can be quite aggressive, it is quite predictable, meaning that it will grow, and grow, and travel throughout the body in a routine pattern--from the lowest lymph node to the next, to the next, then up to the the rest of the body.  So since we caught it in the first node, but not in the others we know that it is not elsewhere in the body, which is good news.

Anyway, long story short, we now have a plan of attack in place to treat this disease.  Starting on Monday I will begin 3-4 weeks of chemo/radiation treatments.  The chemo will take place on Monday and the radiation will take place on Monday through Friday.  The radiologist said that Monday will take approximately half a day to get through from beginning to end, while on Tuesday through Friday I will probably spend more time driving to the hospital and changing into my gown, than I will receiving the radiation.

After 3-4 weeks they will check to see how the cancer is responding and then begin what is called Implant Radiation.   After hearing about this type of radiation, it sounds like radiation on steroids...a high dosage of radiation applied directly to the affected site.

When that is over, then there will be a couple of more weeks of chemo and radiation.  So that's about 7 weeks of treatment and then they will see what the response of the cancer has been.  Right now, looking at my calendar, we will be hoping for a very happy and very thankful Thanksgiving!