Thursdays, Lesions, Software and Possibilities

Possible check – out today.  The gold standard would be to have one of these small (.8mm) lesions in my lung biopsied to see if it’s the same cancer as in the prostate or a different pathology altogether.  Why this is important in just a sec.   We tried the standard needle biopsy (handled well and hardly felt a thing under the good hands of Dr. Chia) but alas, he was unable to grab that little bugger!  But, there’s a pulmonary whiz kid with his high falluttin’ software that can map a path to one of the eligible samples so that the biopsy can be done using my own, naturally existing, web-like bronchial pathways rather than dissecting a slice of lung, via a meat cleaver.  I prefer the former.  It will take him a day or two to fit me into his schedule to see if it can be done in my case and, then, if it can, a day of so to schedule the Videos Assisted Mapped Pulmonary surgery.

This is important because if the cancer from the prostate is the same as that of what’s in the lung, my options for treatment are much fewer as you are basically treating Stage 4/End Stage PC that has escaped the gland.  If the cancer is different, surgery and radiation remain options that I could choose, giving me the possibility of being cancer free after some pretty brutal treatment.  Send visions of seeing this tall, white, high paced skinny surgeon doing has magic and grabbing a piece of different, easily treatable tumor please!