Shades of Gray 🩶

July 26, 2024

Like many things in life, medicine is not black and white. I’m reminded of this every time I have a test or conversation with my medical team.

Earlier in July I had a PET scan. This is one of the primary tools my oncologist uses to determine the status of the cancer. According to the PET, there was increased update / brightness on the image, potentially indicating progression or the cancer being active. However, my blood work (tumor markers) show things as steady, no progression. My tumor markers have been pretty accurate in general.

So, we have conflicting data, which makes decision making challenging.

Given that there are a finite number of treatments, the goal is to stay on each treatment as long as possible. Once you move off a treatment you can’t go back to it. The reason for this is that the cancer has mutated and figured out a way around the treatment so it wouldn’t be effective to go back and take the same medication after you have progression on it.

So, I’m in a situation where one piece of data says potential progression and another piece of data says no progression. What to do?

I will stay on my current treatment (Enhertu) but have another PET scan in 2 months, instead of the typical 3 months. This way we are not waiting too long if there is progression and if there is no progression then we just continue on.

This situation is stressful in spite of my trying not to be too stressed out about things. The uncertainty is hard to deal with.

Working in my favor are 2 upcoming months of lots of exciting things including travel. The best – and only – thing I can do is focus on the here and now and enjoy each day to the fullest. I hope you do the same.