We met this morning with the oncologist, and received somewhat confusing news. The good news: the chemotherapy is doing a good job on the tumors in her abdomen. They have reduced as intended.
The confusing part is that the CT scan showed some spots on her liver.
The confusion is in the fact that when chemo works on one set of tumors, it should work on another. So he wasn’t sure what to make of it.
He plans to present her case to the tumor board (a multidisciplinary team of physicians) for a discussion of her case, and to get some thoughts on next steps. His current inclination is to keep on with her current regimen, given the success on the tumors.
I do recall a while back there were some questionable spots on her liver, but he didn’t seem concerned. I don’t know if a biopsy would help to determine whether these findings represent a spread (metastisis) of the bladder cancer cells, or if it’s something new and unrelated.
The oncologist canceled tomorrow’s chemotherapy session to give her a week off and to wait and see what the tumor board recommends.
So that’s the news for now. Seems we spend a lot of time waiting, living in a sort of suspended animation. I prefer to breathe a slight sigh of relief that at least her therapy has worked where it was supposed to. And with a week’s respite from chemo, she has a little extra energy so we can go out to lunch.
We’ll have to sort out the “confusing” bit next week.