relief

This morning I heard a message on my work phone that I must have missed yesterday after I had left for the day. The PA at my endocrinologist's office called, which surprised me because earlier I had called the MA, who said the PA did not work with the cancer patients. My labwork and WBS results had come in, but the doctor would not be back until next week.

So I take these as preliminary results until the real doctor sees them. This news has three stages.

1. NEGATIVE pregnancy test. This is good for us on multiple levels. If I had been pregnant, I could not have taken the test at all. We didn't think we were pregnant, nor were we trying to conceive. This test was done strictly so that I could safely take the radioactive Iodine (RAI).

2. NEGATIVE scan (WBS). I did not glow. This means that although there are some crazy microscopic cancer cells still there, they have NOT grown out of control. I did not light up like a Christmas tree. There is no reason to believe that the cancer has metastisized (or spread) anywhere else in my body.

This was especially good news for me because I was really worried right after the scan. People kept coming into the room to make sure the machine was set the right way, which was disconcerning for me. But the official report is back -- and, honey, it looks good.

3. NORMAL thyroglobulin (tumor marker). My tumor marker was drawn before the RAI dose was given. This test was drawn after I had taken some special shots to alter my hormones without going off of Synthroid. This test reflects what my tumor marker would be if it was not suppressed by medicine. The results came back positive, but within the normal range for someone with cancer.

This is where things get sticky because I don't want to get really excited before the doctor gets to see these results. I don't know if it's really normal or high normal. I don't know if it's so normal that we'll just watch it or if it's borderline normal where we should probably be proactive and treat anyway.

Overall I interpret this as good news, but we're not going to pop the cork on the champagne until we get the official head nod and plan for the next several months. (What's next? Do we sit and wait? When do we draw another Tg? What is the green light we need before we can start making babies?)

Meanwhile, we drove by the house yesterday and the brick is going up quickly. It's looking great; we're very pleased with the brick that we chose. They hadn't layed the brick around the mantle yet... but with as fast as they're moving, it'll be finished soon (so long as the weather stays nice).