Roberta and I spent the week of April 10th in Albuquerque. She had GammaKnife treatment on her tumor. The staff at Lovelace Medical Center was excellent. We went in at 6:00 AM on Wednesday and were out by noon. I'll let her describe the process. I spent Wednesday evening through Friday morning cleaning out my colon (no food). I went in to the VA center at 7:00. This time I was on my back with the Radiologist inserting the biopsy needle through my stomach. No real pain thanks to local anestetic. I was able to see the CT scan monitor and watched the succession of scans as the radiologist pushed the needle in, guided by successive CT scans.
I was back in recovery by 10:00 AM, but had to lie still till 2:00 PM, before leaving. The Radiologist said that it was most likely a very good biopsy. The pathology department will now analyze for at least a week. I think that the medical team has accepted that I probably really do have a cancer. The biopsy will divulge if some flavor of non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. If NOT non-Hodgkins, then I will probably have to have a surgical biopsy to confirm Hodgkins.
I will spend the next week finally looking at my CT scans and PET scan and developing a list of qusestions for the oncologist when she calls. It is a little frustrating to not have sat down face-to-face with an oncologist through all of this first month of the preocess.
