CAT test results

So this is a mixed bag of good and bad news, but I am choosing to focus most on the good aspect of this.

Mom had a CAT scan done on Thursday, to look at her liver and see how things were progressing. They were able to get a clearer look at the lesions on her liver...and have decided that she does not haveliver cancer. The "attenuations" or scarring, is not what you would expect to see in someone with liver cancer. The doctor thinks it might just be scarring from when she had her gallbladder removed last winter. WOO!

The downside is that this puts us back at square one: knowing that she has cancer but not knowing where it is. Her CA125 still indicates that she has cancer of the ovarian type somewhere. She's supposed to be tested again in a few weeks, to see what those numbers are doing, but she's going to wait until about mid-May. She and my dad are leaving on the 18th to go on a month-long trip around the States. I know that they're spending a few days in D.C. looking at monuments. They're going to try and take in a Red Sox game. They'll be visiting lots of family while they're back East. This is something they were planning on doing when dad retired but are now doing it sooner for obvious reasons.

I'm choosing to be happy that she doesn't have liver cancer. From what I know of the body and cancers, liver is one of the more painful areas to get cancer. The liver controls over 200 functions in the body - that's 200 things to have go haywire before the end...which is very painful in and of itself, just given the nature of the disease. This is not to say that other types of cancer are not painful or deadly, for they are, it's just that cancer is one of the more painful and deadly types. It can't be treated. Mom probably won't start treatments again anyhow...but it's ok.