Today marked Chuck’s fifth chemo treatment. It was also the day we got the results of the PET scan he had last week to measure the effectiveness of the chemo on his lymphoma. It wasn’t the slam dunk we had hoped for, but it wasn’t all bad either. His lymph nodes are all clear – the cancer is gone in all of the places where it had been previously identified. That’s good news. BUT the doctor says there’s a very small lesion in his abdomen that she wants to know more about, so he needs a needle biopsy. That’s where they stick a CT-guided needle into his stomach and take a tissue sample. Yech! They give him a local anesthetic, but he doesn’t have to be knocked out (though if people were sticking needles in MY stomach, I think I’d want to be!!).

We had gotten geared up for a clean bill of health and didn’t quite get it. The doctor said the lesion was unusual given that all other evidence of the cancer was gone so it might be a result of the chronic constipation poor Chuck has battled throughout chemo or inflammation from a compromised immune system. If it is more lymphoma, well, we’ll deal with that when we have to. So the journey continues.