February 3, 2023 Evening Post

If I had to pick one word to summarize the day, that word would be: encouraged.

We were able to set up the opportunity to return to Mayo through the radiation oncologist that we knew, because that was our only contact at Mayo. As we indicated earlier, she was away and her resident was thrown into the role of trying to figure out who we needed to see. Words can’t convey how much I appreciated the two of them getting the ball rolling. This afternoon I was blessed to see Dr. Petersen again after 22 years.

Getting your foot in the door at Mayo is the first step. Sorry about the pun. Once here, someone will figure out a plan.

We had an hour consultation with a radiation oncologist. Dr. Davis is a marvelous man with a great heart. No one at Mayo knew what direction I needed to head or had put in motion the plan to determine it. Dr. Davis lovingly chose to spend an hour with us. After looking at the scans, he eventually started calling radiologists at Mayo on Friday afternoon at 4:00 p.m. until one answered his call. The two of them took at least 20 minutes looking over the scans and seeking to determine some plan for me. I will forever be grateful to him for that. He could have sent me on our way to the next doctor, but he chose not to do so. He was not pleased with the direction of what was already scheduled.

He would (hopefully will) be the doctor who will at some point treat the prostate cancer. In his words, the scans “didn’t look like a lit-up Christmas tree,” which was good news. When possible, the treatment for the prostate cancer would be 5 radiation treatments, every other day and would be completed in 10 days. That would be followed by a hormone injection that would greatly reduce the amount of testosterone in my body. The side effects would last for about six months. Fatigue, possible weight gain, and some others.

As for whatever else is going on, neither he nor the radiologist could give a definitive answer. The PET scan that was done on Wednesday in Lexington was inconclusive because the focus of that particular PET scan was to see if the prostate cancer had spread, not to see if there were other cancers. That means that I will likely have a different PET scan the first of the week.

None of the scans so far is definitive that I have multiple myeloma or that it isn’t multiple myeloma. The spots that have been observed on the scans indicate that something abnormal is going on. We just don’t know, as yet, what it is.

It looks like additional testing will be done the first of the week, including possibly a bone marrow biopsy. So we really don’t know a great deal more than we did, other than that there seems to be a better plan to come up with the plan. I told Dr. Davis that we were planning to stay in Rochester until they diagnosed the problem and came up with a treatment plan.

So we are encouraged.

We had a couple of blessings along the way today. One of them was when we were eating supper after the consultation. We so appreciate your loving response to all of this, one of them the gift cards that some of you knew about and gave to Dottie. I only know who gave one of them, a gift card to Texas Roadhouse. While we were eating at Texas Roadhouse, I texted this couple, thanking them for loving us. They responded, “Enjoy! We are having beans!” Laughter always helps.

Let me close with some things that I have learned today.
1.) The old saying that goes something like “being cold to the bone” is true here. Getting fuel early in the morning when it’s this cold meant that I didn’t thaw out for most of the day.
2.) You can be served four eggs at Burger King for $4.20 or four eggs at Denny’s for $12.83 plus tax and tip. Hum, I wonder where I will order eggs in the morning?

Likely we won’t blog again until Monday after two chapters of a book we sent you today.

Thanks again for your love, prayers, and encouragement.