Result Day. I saw the doctor to go over the CT scan I had done. Good news! Actually wonderful news! The sweetest words for any cancer patient to hear ---no evidence of disease. For those of us dealing with cancer it's NED for short. I say that I'm NED from GOD!!



I had 2 areas that to watch for on the scan. There was the swollen pelvic lymph node that biopsed positive for cancer and a slightly swollen axillary chest lymph node. After the 2nd round of chemo, I had my first CT scan to check the progress and the axillary lymph node had shrunk some but still slightly swollen, but the pelvic lymph node had shrunk entirely back to normal. This time after my 4th round of chemo, the axillary lymph node shrunk even more but still a tiny bit enlarged and the pelvic lymph node continued to be normal size. So no additional findings and the reported conclusion for the chest, pelvis, and abdomen scans was "no evidence of disease". Wonderful, wonderful!! And my CA-125 marker has been dropping and is now at a respectible normal number of 15.95. I'm doing well!!



Now the humorous thing, if there can be anything humorous with going in to see a doctor for CT scan results of chemo treatments for a recurrence, is that I definitely got the impression that my doctor was covering all the bases and making up for the last office visit when I had a mini meltdown getting the results. Last time, the doctor came in and immediately went over the results. He first said "the spot on the lung was smaller" and the pelvic lymph node was back to normal. Actually the news about the pelvic lymph node is a summary of what my husband told me because the only words I remember were about my lung. I did sort of freaked out and started crying and asking about the cancer spreading and lung cancer etc. Nobody mentioned the slightly swollen axiallary lymph node to me before that, probably because it was so tiny and hadn't shown up on a PET scan. The chest lymph node is on what they call a lung scan so that's why the doctor had phrased it like that. Anyway, this time around, my doctor didn't go over the scan result right away. He did the usual gyneo exam and then went out to get the scan result to go over with me at the end. Actually this in itself sort of upset me because the last time he didn't go over the results immediately was with my biopsy so my mind was off wondering if I had bad news now. I bet it's written in red ink on my chart that I freak out easily ---because in thinking back about this office visit, I saw how my doctor wanted to improve on the "lung cancer scare" I had last time. He probably wanted to wait until the end of the visit to go over results so that I wouldn't have a long crying incident like before. And this time, he made a point of being beside me with the scan result and reading it to me so there wouldn't be any surprises. Yes, I think he carefully customized this scan result visit to make up for last time. He even put his arm around me and told me "you're doing excellent". He knows now that I'm one of those patients that can freak out, cries easily, and need encouragement. I suppose some cancer patients may be the stoic and brave and calm all the time. But that's definitely not me.