Nelie,

Hooray!

Clint

Nelie,

I join in with the others.... Happy for the good news!

take care,
Diane

OK. I'm bringing this back because at my last appointment with my MO, a couple of weeks ago, he mentioned that he had looked over the MRI which I had following the questionable PET and he didn't see anything to worry about, especially since my ENT had thoroughly examined me with a scope and, 4 weeks before that PET with the worrisome results, I had had surgery to remove the stent in my throat where the doctor had to be using some sort of scope to see down there and would certainly have mentioned it if he saw anything looking like cancer (I hope this is true. the surgeon helping me get my esophagus open is at another hospital and is not treating me for cancer but does see other patients with esophageal cancer all the time and would presumably recognize something amiss if he saw it in his travels down my throat).

So after this discussion I got up the courage to finally ask my MO (who is good at taking time to exaplin detailed medical results) what the PET report had said exactly (I hadn't asked before because I was afraid it would scare me more). It turns out that there were three areas one around the base of my tongue and two around lymph node areas in which there was "marginal" activation. What my MO said is there is a range of uptake in a PET scan where it's clear nothong unusual is there, then there is a range where it's clear there's something that should be investiagted further. And in between is this "marginal" range where no one knows exactly what is going on. But the scary thing of course, is that this marginal activation was around where a recurrence would be likely to happen.

He reassured me again saying that MRIs were not really the best at detecting early tongue cancer recurrences but the visual exam with a scope WAS and I'd had a bunch of that lately and gotten the all clear (however, when I saw my ENT he had said he felt relieved because the MO had checked the MRI and found nothing to worry about so it seems they both are placing a lot of weight on the other's way of checking things).

Anyway, I'd like to celebrate my upcoming 2 year anniversary of the end of treatment (in a couple of weeks) but I'm still a little worried by the PET results, I'm thinking maybe I should wait 6 more months or something to be sure it was nothing. Sigh.

Nelie

Does anyone ever stop worrying about recurrence?I am sorry you have to carry this burden Nelie it should now be a time for looking forwards and i bet all you can think about is what happened before.Good Luck

LIZ