Bad News.

Yesterday I got a really weird email from my GP saying that he could refer me to Dr Alwyn D'Souza the haematologist at Wellington Hospital if I wanted him to. He also said that Dr Dady had no interest in seeing me.

That came as a huge shock as I had not seen the PET scan results yet but it could only mean one thing. That the scan was positive for Hodgkins.
I quickly fired off emails to both my GP and the Dr at Pacific Radiology saying "please explain". Only Trevor Fitzjohn from Pacific replied.
He said that the results had been confirmed that day and were in the post to me and my GP. That he had contacted Wellington hospital to find out who to send the results to there, and that Dr D'Souza was keen to see me.

The result was a very upsetting and stressful night for Sarah as she worried over what the report would contain. I'd resolved myself to the fact it was not going to be good news.
Sure enough today I got two copies of the written report in the post along with a CD of the scan images.
The scan shows that I have new areas of involvement in my chest and some lung involvement as well. That would explain the cough. There are no other significant areas of involvement. The liver, spleen and bones are still clear.

I have sent the results to Germany for their opinion and I've asked if Dr D'Souza, the haematologist at the Wgtn Blood and cancer centre can see me as soon as possible.
Treatment-wise it looks like I'm back where I was three months ago; High dose chemo with stem cell recovery (transplant). It's way too early to even start planning anything but my thoughts are to have the Autologous stem cell transplant here in NZ.
The reason for this would be that if it failed we could then still investigate other treatments overseas. Doing it the other way round may not be affordable.

So there you have it.. really, really bad news. I'm sorry to have to share that with you. I was so looking forward to finally knocking it on the head once and for all. Those night sweats I had a few weeks ago were the bad news I had suspected they were. As to why they have not returned I have no idea. I'm certainly not complaining.

Mentally I'm as up-beat as ever, I'm sure in the end I'll beat this. It's Sarah that I worry about. As you can imagine she really takes it hard.

I'll update once I've spoken to the haematologist or had word from Germany on their thoughts.

..Ron