Day 38: PET Scan results are positive

I haven't updated the blog since the day I was released from the hospital on June 25, but you haven't missed much.

The protocol for my clinical trial included daily visits back to the hospital for blood draws and evaluation by the nurse practitioners. 

Each day, they'd start my appointment off with the blood draw and the results continued to improve throughout the past two weeks. 

In meeting with the nurse practitioner, she'd ask me standard questions about any side effects I've encountered and we continued with my Cartox test. That's the silly questions they asked me twice a day during the hospital stay. The questions included what year and month it is, what city we were in, what hospital I was visiting and who the president is. I also have to count backward from 100 by 10s and write a sentence and sign my name. 

So, as you can see, there wasn't much to write about since my discharge.

Everything has gone pretty well. I do fatigue faster than I'd like. By 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. each day I'm ready for bed. I do have more energy during the early morning and afternoon hours.

Side by Side view of first and second scans

Unfortunately, most of that time has been spent at the hospital but that all changes now.

Friday completed the last week of my daily visits to the hospital. Moving forward, I'll return to the hospital just once per week beginning next Monday, July 22. That means I'll now have more time to settle back into my normal routine.

I kind of buried the lede here as Friday was a big day in my treatment. We used a PET Scan to see just how well the CAR-T therapy has worked.

The photo to the right is a side by side comparison of the PET Scans I had taken on April 22, 2019 and July 12, 2019. Click here for a larger version.

In the scan on the left, you'll see circled all the major spots where the cancerous cells were present. Basically, there were large concentrations of cancer cells in my neck area, under my arms, in through my chest and abdomen and more in my groin area.

The scan on the right shows most of those areas have been eliminated with some residual spots remaining. The CAR-T cells can continue to work for up to 90 days or more, so we're hoping the 60-day and 90-day scans continue to show improvement.

Here's another view of the PET scan, again with the April 22 scan on the left and Friday's scan on the right:

Using radioactive drug tracers, PET Scans help the doctors to identify where cancerous cells exist in the body.

In the April 22 scan, you see the "hot spots" under my arm and in my chest/abdomen. In the scan on the right, you can see those spots have been eliminated--for the most part. Again, there is some residual marking there but Dr. Boughan said it could be physiological and likely will continue to decrease as time passes.

My next scan is August 12. Hopefully, you won't hear from me before that, which would mean everything has continued to go as planned.