I met with my Doctor Wednesday afternoon regarding my MRI from last Thursday. That MRI involved two extra tests that made it twice as long, and believe me I know what a long MRI is. Anyway, the two extra tests were motivated by two spots that seemed to appear the MRI before. The tests created graphs of the areas highlighted by the chemical contrast. Areas that are or were cancerous. The tests measured blood flow and metabolism. Active tumor would show a lot of activity while dead cells, the result of radiation, necrosis, would show little activity. The graphs that resulted did not resemble what would be expected stereotypically by living tumor, in fact the opposite. The results were inconclusive, or so I'm told since I didn't necessarily understand it exactly. Overall though, it's probably not a bad thing. While there are not clearly not-tumors there are also not tumors, and not tumors is good.
Also it was determined that an area in some of the former tumor space is a cyst. The two uncertain spots that are not clearly tumor (or not not tumor) are on the top and bottom of the cyst. How do they know it's a cyst? - I don't know. We asked, actually Julie asked cause she literally has a more solid head on her shoulders, if the cyst was a new development. The Doctor said that it wasn't. She also asked if there was danger of it bursting. He, again, said there wasn't.
We usually watch Westworld on HBO on Sundays. I then usually listen to a recap and review and speculation podcast (the recappables westworld) on the Ringer podcast network. It goes up Sunday night but I often listen to it Monday (except they didn't post it this Sunday because of the Holiday which put a serious cramp in my style). Tuesday they post another, shorter, podcast after they've taken some time to review larger group reaction and speculation. That's the same thing I think visits with my Doctor need. Another one. A chance to digest and develop new, relevant questions. Especially this time since the presence of a cyst (?) is entirely new. Luckily the Doctor is very responsive to emails. While the drive to the Hospital for another visit would be doable, we did two a month before for the trial, it's not ideal. Plus the Doctor has other important brain cancer business to attend to. So, I think it's important to keep our interactions somewhat minimal (but also enjoyable for us both - to the degree that's possible given the reason). That puts the onus on me when I do send an email for the email to be concise and organized.
I'm now having monitoring MRIs every month. My next MRI will be June 21 and my next meeting with my Doctor is June 25. At that meeting we will discuss the latest MRI and the current situation. That recency bias will make some of the questions I develop now obsolete. It's like Apple is updating my head monthly with each MRI. The 25th will provide the setting and leave a month for me to organize my next round of questions ahead of their irrelevance. Right now it seems many of those currrent questions will now revolve around this cyst.