Appointment with the Haematologist

I met with Dr D'Souza this morning and we went through the various possible outcomes of my treatment.
We talked for over forty five minutes, it looked like I was his only patient for the morning due to the mix up with rescheduling of patients appointments.

He commented on how well I looked, three times in fact!
I have a CT scan logged into the system, this should happen within the next two weeks.
From there based on the scan results I will either have a PET scan if there are any signs of further involvement or if the scan is clear I'll have follow-up scans every six months or so from here out.

If I still have areas of involvement and they are outside of the area previously treated with radiation, It is possible that I could have further radiation treatment. If I have areas within the previously treated field then it is unlikely that any treatment could be given that would be effective.
If I relapse after a period of 6 or more months then an allogeneic stem cell transplant might be looked at. In an allogeneic transplant there is an effect known as "graft vs tumour' in which the new immune system attacks the lymphoma and keeps it at bay. This is only an option on slow growing tumours as it can take three or more months for the effect to kick in.

All of the above is really quite academic because I have no intention of relapsing and I'm positive the CT scan will be clear!

The Doctor also mentioned that my chances were greatly improved over what he first expected due to the good response I had to the salvage (IVE) chemo earlier in the year which wiped out all but one small tumour, and that should have melted away with the following high dose chemo.

Still have a niggling cough, will be a _lot_ happier once it goes.

Who me worry? Naaa

My breathing had gotten worse, the cough more frequent. I've been absolutely terrified at times and then I've convinced myself that it's not the same cough as before and I calm down. Several times while talking to people I have started to cough and I go into sudden panic (not something I'm usually renowned for doing I must add) I can't focus on anything and their words just become a background noise. I've had to sit down and pull myself together.

The fear is that if the Hodgkins has returned so quickly after high dose chemo and stem cell transplant then nothing will get rid of it. The prognosis would be extremely bad.

..But then while sitting at my desk yesterday, I heard Kurt coughing away in the workshop. I called him into my office and asked him what the story was with the coughing? . He replied that he had no idea, it had just come on over the weekend and he would be fine for hours then suddenly feel like he had breathed in something and would start to cough for a few minutes then it would stop. ...My symptoms exactly!
I could have almost hugged him. !! There's obviously something going around.
I'm a lot more relaxed now, as you can imagine.

I sent an email to Dr D'Souza earlier in the week asking him for an appointment to replace the one that has been postponed before Easter as I had heard nothing from the hospital with regards to a new time.
He replied with the following..

"Hi Ron,

You were supposed to have been booked on to an extra clinic to see me on a Wednesday morning. I've only just discovered that these clinics weren't set up as I had requested. I was expecting to be doing a full clinic on Wednesday morning. How does 9am sound?

Alwyn"

So as you can see it really does pay to be pro-active when it comes to these things. None of the other patients had bothered to enquire and so his clinics would have been empty with everyone wondering what happened..
Myself on the other hand have managed to score the first appointment at 9am tomorrow :)

I'll ask him if he can schedule either a CT or a PET as soon as possible so I can finally relax and get on with life.

It looks like Sarah and I have found a house to rent. It's a large modern three bedroom house in Avalon. It's got a big double garage with internal access, so plenty of room for cars and stuff. It's wired for TelstraClear cable so there's no issues with phone numbers, TV and internet (all very important stuff!)
Hopefully we move in next weekend (early may) just got to sign the forms etc. We have now sold all of our properties in preparation for building the new house. So as of May 8th we are officially homeless! ;)

I'll post tomorrow if the doctor has anything interesting to say...