9-23-09 Wed

I want to take this time to explain to you, what was explained to me yesterday, by two of the brightest most intelligent men I have ever met. I first went to see Dr. Cummings. He is a man about 45 to 50 who is a Orthopaedic Oncologist Surgeon. How the hell long would it take to get three different specialties. He is as down to earth as you can get. He is friendly and will sit and talk to you until you understand everything he is going to do, and what the risks are, in what he is going to do.

He told me yesterday that I had one of the largest tumors of it kind that he has ever seen in a man's arm. He also told me why he had to take so much of my bicep. What he needed to do was to take as much bicep as he could see that had been touched by the tumor. He needed to make sure that none of the tumor was left behind, because that is the cancer. If you let the smallest piece behind, you have not solve the problem, you have hidden the next problem. This kind of cancer is unique in the fact that if it is to come back, it comes back in the same spot that it once was. It doesn't take much explaining to figure out why that may happen. If you let a small piece behind, it just might grow into another tumor.

This all made a great deal of sense to me, and answered any question I had as to why so much of my bicep was taken. He also explained why it looked like it did. He was forced to take much of the skin that was on the side where the tumor was. He had to take the skin from under my bicep and pull it to meet the skin that had not been touched by the tumor. It doesn't show very well, but if you look at my scar you can see the large dent in my arm and how the skin has been pulled together.

After talking to him and getting a very good prognosis from him, I had one more appointment to keep. That was with the number one doctor in the country on soft tissue sarcomas. Actually I found out yesterday he is an expert in all sarcomas. His name is Dr. Rushing from the IU Cancer Center. Lance Armstrong says, in a plaque on the wall, the best Cancer Center in the World.

Dr. Rushing is a man of my age plus or minus a year or so. He has spent his career studying sarcomas. He loves to explain how they differ from all the other cancers there are. First of all, they are the rarest of all the cancers. The only study that has ever been done on them was 20 years ago and it only covered 1450 cases of every different kind of sarcomas. As he said, there are over 100 different kinds of sarcomas, and they grouped them all in the study. What they were able to conclude was almost nothing because of so few subjects had the same sarcomas. There are also 12 different kinds of chemo compounds that were used in the experiment. There findings as to the best use of chemo where as follows. It seems to work best on Men who are between 30 and 60. Men as apposed to women, Soft tissue in a limb. High grade as to low. Healthy as apposed to sickly, good positive mental attitude. As he told me I had all but the 30 to 60 but that I was close enough to the 60 not to matter too much.

That was the only real thing that had been studied about sarcomas. He has spent the last 20 years trying to add to that base of knowledge. He then explained how the high grade sarcoma is actually better in some ways than the low. It is more difficult for the high grade to spread because it does not stay in a small state long enough to spread into the blood stream. It's not to say it can't, but it is more difficult. The place that it can spread from the arm is to the lungs. At he told me in the beginning, you don't want it in your lungs.

We had the radiation doctor, Dr Chang tell us that what he did with the chemo was very controversial. What Dr. Rushing said about Dr. Chang is that he is like most Dr's that don't understand about high grade soft tissue sarcomas, they don't even know what they don't know. Of course Dr. Change thinks that radiation is the only way to treat a sarcoma. He is half right, as Dr. Rushing says. The chemo is to kill any microscopic sarcoma that might have spread into the lungs as this cancer first grew. Once it started to grow the chances of it spreading are diminished, but you do the chemo for insurance sake. As he told me, the sarcoma in the arm will not kill you. That can't be said about your lungs or any vital organ.

That is the reason for the chemo. Now the reason I didn't go the entire way on the chemo was the fact that it was growing to fast, and starting to hurt the arm itself. He did not want it to wrap around any nerves or arteries, so it was best to take it when they did. If it did wrap around the nerves and arteries, they would have to take the entire arm.

As I told you yesterday, I had a CT Scan last Tuesday to see if I had any cancer that was detected in my lungs. The answer to that question is a resounding NO!!!!!!! Both doctors congratulated me on the fact that, at this time, there is no detectable cancer in my body. I'm clean and cancer free. I was so relieved, Sharon just looked at me and said, "I knew that all along." I knew since the first CT Scan that you were clear. I love her attitude, she is my strength, and for the past month she has had a pinched nerve in her back and has done nothing about it because she has been so busy. Thank God today she had her own MRI. We head for California tomorrow, but next week she is going to have it looked into. She is my age, and takes no pills of an kind not even aspirin. She has not seen a doctor since she broke both wrists three years ago. I'm sure she will breeze through this also.

Well that's it kids, I started this to keep track of what it would be like to fight cancer. I sure as hell found that out. For this part, and time in my life, I have won my battle with cancer. I hope never to have to do it again. I hope none of you ever have to face it either. It ain't fun, but it can be beat. Prayer and the best doctors you can find is the best way I know to beat it. Thank to all who have stuck by me and kept me going. Especially my entire family. I always knew you loved me, I just didn't know how much, and what you would do in my time of need. I love each and every one of you more than you will ever know. Even you Margo. Speaking of Margo, she told me I should put picture of what I look like now on the blog. so here they.

This ends the BLOG for good, I HOPE!

Thanks to all for caring.

Tom