We are seeing a local oncologist. We’re also going to be in Houston next week getting a second opinion.
So this is the local dr’s assessment and treatment plan. We’ll see how closely it agrees with what the good doctors in Houston have to say next week.
It is at Stage 2A. Stage 2 means it’s in multiple locations, but it hasn’t spread out of the chest (it’s a bad marker if it’s moved below the diaphragm) and it hasn’t spread to any other organ systems. ‘A’ means that he doesn’t have any physical symptoms (sudden weight loss, fever, night sweats, extreme lethargy).
The treatment plan for this is 8 doses of chemo. It’ll be one day of chemo every two weeks, so the whole thing takes 4 months to get through. Then he’ll have another set of CT/PET scans to see how effective the chemo was. This will be either followed by radiation in the current hot spots, or radiation and further treatment.
All that remains is to see how hard the chemo hits. But in general, this seems like a timeframe and a schedule that we can manage.
That’s not too bad. I think you can get through that with relatively little pain. It sounds like you caught it early. It is still terrible but, between knowing that they say “cure” and knowing treatment will be every other week and probably done in 6 months or less, it sounds less dire.