Simone's home! Scans disappointing.

Simone is home!!! We got him back night before last, and I can't even begin to explain how relieved and happy I am! He did not find us, we found him. He was down the street from us, and a neighbor called with another "Simone Sighting," only this time we actually saw him! The poor guy was completely traumatized and tried to run away from us. He'd been lurking around where I'd been calling his name and walking around looking for him, a fact which bewildered me but the vet said was not uncommon when a cat is traumatized. We cornered him behind a grill under the plastic cover, and it ended up being a sort of violent capture, with him obviously terrified and peeing all over himself, Lorraine getting rather badly bitten, and me getting scratched. We spent the evening at Immediate Care and then I took him to the vet yesterday. He's a bit banged up (he had to get the last vestiges of a screwed up claw removed under anesthesia) and has been sneezing nonstop from having been out in the rain and sub-freezing temperatures. He was dehydrated, but that has passed. We're giving him antibiotics and painkillers. The poor sweetie has clearly been through the ringer and needs to reacclimate to our home. He's sleeping SO much (I'm sure to catch up) and he just wants to be on top of or next to me. He seems pretty freaked out and jumps at any sudden movements or loud or jarring noises.

What a gift to get him home! If we hadn't been relentless in our search, we wouldn't have gotten him back. He was separated from our home by construction and a big, barking, loose dog....so I'm not sure he would have made it back. His nails were all almost down to the quick and shredded, so it looks like he was either trapped somewhere or maybe tried to climb our wooden fence to get back in. At any rate, my baby's back home!! He was gone for 7 days and it felt like a lifetime.

The scans: the latest is that the abdominal CT showed enlarged nodes in my abdomen. The thing is, those nodes (increased to about 1 cm to 1.5 cm) don't line up with the nodes of the CT portion of the PET/CT that lit up, nor does the PET portion showing nodes line up with either CT. Wacky.

I spoke to my beloved onc a little while ago, and he doesn't think this is cancer. I agree with him but of course am still a bit freaked out and would have preferred to get good news instead. He believes that it's inflammation and scarring from the transplant, and says that when inflammation is present after receiving intensive chemotherapy, it frequently presents in the abdomen. I don't have any B symptoms, and my disease at the time of relapse was present only around my clavicle, not anywhere in my abdomen. I asked about the high SUV of the PET (ranging 4.1 to a high 10.2) and he said that even at the 10.2 it could be caused by inflammation.

He gave me 3 options:

1. Get a CT-guided biopsy, but because of the location and depth of this node, they'd have to go through my liver, which would present risk.

2. Get the node surgically removed, involving cutting open my stomach and cutting/moving around my organs to get it out.

3. Wait until my already scheduled scans in April and see what they show.

I'm going with the third option. 2 months isn't going to cost me my life if it is cancer, and really the only thing I'll lose is sleep.

He said that he has another patient that experienced this same thing, only they did biopsy that guy's abdominal node and it showed only inflammation.

So I'm in watch and wait until April. It sure as hell would have been nice to get good news, but I'm just going to have to cling to the knowledge that ICE got me into remission going into my SCT and reduced my tumor by more than half, and that radiation reduced it by half again, so it's now down to about 1.5 cm, which is certainly scar tissue, since nothing at all lit up there. I am just going to have to continue to tell myself that this is residual inflammation. In a way, I wish we'd waited until the 6-month point before scanning at all -- hindsight being 20/20, that is.

Lorraine wants to know what we do if it IS cancer. I can't answer that. I can only concentrate on maintaining hope that it's not.

So there's my update! I have the gift of a returned Simone and a little uncertainty with my scans....but all in all I feel well and truly blessed. I know that the next scans will show that these recent funky scans result from inflammation and scarring. To think anything else is madness.