Hi Folks,

Here's an update with my situation. As my signature shows, late in June this year I had a PET scan that revealed that my third recurrence had arrived, right on time.

This go-round, we decided that since the Xeloda (pill-form Chemo,) which had worked so well on the last batch of tumors, we'd use it for this batch also.

Oooops...

I just had my mid-course PET scan on Monday and on Tuesday, my MO informed me that said Xeloda, which had eliminated the tumors in the second recurrence, was not working this time. All the tumors are still in the liver, all have grown some, and there are newcomers to the party.

So, we decided to go another route.

Wednesday, I had an initial consultation with a new kind of radiologist who is going to enter the femoral artery through my groin and implant a bunch of radioactive beads directly into the liver. Well, actually into one lobe of the liver, 6 days later, he'll repeat the process and hit the other lobe.

Yesterday, I had a CAT scan with Iodine marker. I always enjoy those, seriously! They give you a very warm feeling, somewhat like the spreading glow you get when you drink a hot toddy on a very cold day! The purpose of this was to map the distribution of blood vessels in the area; which I am under the impression will be used to guide the gizmo that implants the beads.

Pretty cool stuff, even better if I can persuade them to shrink a submarine down and hit those tumors with miniature torpedos.

Oh wait, scratch that, I just realized that I'm just geezin'... again.

All kidding aside, since this procedure is repeatable, I'm quite pleased. I'll be positively tickled if it works as well as advertised (they tell me this has a very high success rate with very few reported side-effects, and I can definitely dig that!) Since I know that we'll be doing this dance until more tumors show up than can be managed this way, having an effective management tool that can be re-used is comforting.

So is a good stiff drink, and now that that subject has been broached, and I hav nothing further to report, I believe that I shall test that thesis without further ado.

Prosit!