5 Nights at Seton and It Doesn’tz Lookz Any Betterz Folkz

Late Saturday, after having increased abdominal pain deep down in the area of one’s prostate, Derrell finally took me to Seton Southwest  Hospital where they fully narcated me (is narcated a word?) Either way, I felt nothing on that old 1-10 scale thing.  They also did a CT scan of my lower abdomen and when you shoot the lower abdomen on a short guy, you pick up the bottom lobes of the lungs.  Funny things about my lungs is they had all these little black dots…(up to 8mm in some cases)……suspicious by any standards so, they did a full chest CT and turns out my lungs have about 19 of these odd blue dots.  Not much happens in hospitals during weekends (“We’re open ugh 8-5, Monday through Friday only folks …….unless you are in the imminent process of dying”).

So with two lungsfull of odd black dots, I then get the pathology reports from the biopsy.  Gleason Scale 8 (Gleason1-6 nothing to worry about and often debated as to whether the term cancer should be used at all) with 7-9 being progressively worse.  Mine’s a strong 8, quite aggressive and  has escaped the prostatic shell.  They attempt to do a biopsy of my lungs and I am heavily sedated.  They can’t quite get the piece of tissue they want and decide to try again for another  time under total sedation where they can get  a full sample. Tests are also run to determine if there has been metastasis to my bones.  The theory is that I am one of very, VERY few men who have used finasteride (i.e. Propecia) and not only went on to get PC but a very aggressive form of PC that  has moved to places PC doesn’t usually metastasize to (i.e. the lungs).

Oncologist Dr. Peter Kasper has just come to pay a visit and feels we must first focus on what’s going on with the lungs. The bone scan came back negative so at least for right now, there is no need to worry about bone involvement.  Next stop on the Train:  More Pulmonary Work!