Scan Results

Amazingly, I have my scan results already, and they're great.

Dr. R left a message yesterday in the late afternoon, while we were out. He said the scan was very good, and that I should keep doing whatever I'm doing (which is a dangerous thing to say to someone with my bad habits).

In fact, he said some nodes that had been active (I've had a little activity in about 6 node clusters since the start of all this) didn't have any activity at all now.

So the Rituxan seems to have done a great job, even 18 months out.

This is certainly excellent news, and it takes some emotional pressure off of us.

But -- to be realistic -- odds are very good that the Rutuxan is not a permanent solution, and we'll need to continue to keep an eye on things. This kind of waxing-and-waning, getting a little better/getting a little worse again, is all typical for follicular NHL.

But for now, we're giving a little cheer.

And a big shout-out to Dr. R and the folks at St. Raphael's imaging department for getting the results to me so quickly.  I'm going to have some very jealous support group buddies, some of whom have to wait a week or more for results.

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A quick running update, too, which is related to the scan results, sort of.

I've been running on the treadmill almost exculsively for the last couple of years. But for about 6 weeks, I've been trying to run outside on Saturdays, my old 3 mile routes through the neighborhood. One route in particular was always my favorite -- it has a huge hill in the middle. I've been running that route the last few Saturdays, and doing it disappointingly, taking about 5 minutes more than I used to do it a couple of years ago.

The problem has been that I was diagnosed with asthma in the spring. When I've been running this hill route, I've been doing great until the top of the big hill, and then I've collapsed when my lungs have rebelled.

But last weekend, I think I solved my asthma problem. The soilution? I turned down the A/C in our room at night. All that cold air in my lungs had apparantly been doing a number on them. Lower A/C = happier lungs when I get up. So getting the good scan results was doubly good, because it got rid of any questions I had about whether my lung problems were really swollen nodes in my chest.

So today, when I ran my hilly route, I felt great. I hit the big hill with a good steady pace. At the top, I didn't feel the need to collapse. I kept my steady pace going all the way home. And when I got there, I saw that I had taken 3 minutes off my time from last week. Woo hoo!

I'll attribute 30 seconds to new running shoes, 30 seconds to the lightness that comes from a clean scan, but that's still two minutes that I can credit to happier lungs. It felt awesome.

I haven't raced in just over a year, but now I'm inspired to look for a good fall 5k. I'll keep you posted.