Karlye's appointment with Dr. Blair and some Good news.

We went to Karlye's appointment with Dr. Blair and she did confirm the diagnoses of thyroid cancer.  She went over the CT scans that had been done at Lakeland Hospital and showed us the masses in Karlye's neck.  There are more than what we had been told.  She has also ordered a head, neck and chest CT to be done next Tuesday.  She was very nice and very optimistic.  She even took the time to show us how they would determine the stage of Karlye's cancer and because of her age it basically doesn't go higher than stage 2.  She told us that she needed surgery to remove the thyroid and the affected lymph nodes.  The reason she needs the CT scan of the chest is to see if it has spread into Karlye's lungs.  She did not seem too concerned and told us that with surgery and eventual follow up with radioactive iodine that the prognoses was good.  She told us that this is highly curable.  The surgery has been scheduled for December 19th.  If we do not do it that day we will not be able to get her in until after the first of the year.  So, we will make this happen.

Good news!  I did get a call from Dr. Brinker on our way back from Chicago.  He said that I am in remission!  He told me that the pathologist looked high and low for ANY leukemia cells and could not find any.  He did state that i had a protein on my white blood cells that is usually a marker for the existence of leukemia cells.  But, then stated that it might just be that I have that protein on my normal white blood cells anyways.  He stated that the test for the protein only showed 0.02% and again restated that he is calling me to be in remission.  I asked him if we could move up my next round of chemo so that I could be out of the hospital for Karlye's surgery.  He was OK with that.  So, it looks like I will be going in the hospital on Wednesday, December 11 in hopes of getting out on Monday the 16th.  Although this does mean I will be spending my birthday in the hospital.  (Someone is going to owe me.  LOL.)  I am glad that we can move this up so that I can be there when Karlye has her surgery.  Although we are not sure where we will stay because Karlye will be in the hospital for 2 or 3 days.  We will figure all this out in the next week I am sure.