This really isn't a post I want to be making, and I would gladly put it off. But I know so many of you love Cleve and want to know whats happening, so, here goes.
Cleve had his PET scan on Wednesday and his brain MRI on Tuesday. His PET scan showed that he has a somewhat large tumor growing around his right shoulder and under his scapula. He knew something was going on in this region because, though he is mostly numb here from the last surgery, he felt some pain towards his back and under his scapula, we just didn't know it would be so big. His sacral tumor has grown larger as well and is also painful for Cleve. These two aches makes it difficult for him to get comfortable to sleep. There was also a new area that "lit up" on the PET in his upper left thigh in between the muscle tissue but not in the bone. There is also a lesion that showed up in his upper left lobe of his lung. And last but not least, there are two small lesions in his brain.
The amount and severity of the new tumors has really dampened our spirits, so as always, we are taking it one day at a time, one step at a time. And as always, we are so lucky to have an arsenal of people who care for Cleve enough to help us with each step. Immediately, Dr. Poisson and Dr. Traul (his boss) were on the phone to Dr. Hwu at M.D Anderson. It is her recommendation that we take care of the brain lesions first with radiation. She suggested getting the gamma knife procedure done. This is a procedure where a contraption is screwed into his head in order to line up the radiation beams perfectly. Sounds barbaric right? apparently it is only mildly uncomfortable and is a day procedure. This can be done in either Eugene or Portland. However, we have another option open to us thanks to Dr. Bobek who is a neurosurgeon here in the valley, and also one of Cleve's band mates. He has a friend at Stanford who performs this same procedure minus the screws to the head. It was invented there at Stanford and has seen great results. So currently we are waiting to hear back for an appointment time. After we get the radiation to the head, hopefully we will be heading back down to Houston for systemic treatment. This latter part is still a little fuzzy so this is all a tentative plan, you know how things change.
I do have some pictures of some of his scans. Some of the ones of the brain have arrows pointing or something measuring, other than that, I cant help with explaining it further. The PET scan is just one image of the whole series but shows you the general area of the tumors. It is the black and white image. The dark spots are the areas of tumor with the exception of the brain (in this picture you cant see the lesions, thats why we had a MRI done) the heart and the bladder. The kidney's look a bit grey and thats ok. You will see the shoulder lesion which is black, the sacrum which is black and grey and just above the bladder, the leg lesion looks like a pin point black dot, as does the lung lesion on the side, same side as the heart.
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