The return of an unwanted aquaintence.

I decided to sit on this until after two important family functions passed (I didn't want to upstage my cousin, my brother, his wife, or my nephew), and until after I had consulted with a specialist as two what course of action I should take. All this has taken place, so, time to spill the beans:

About a month and a half ago, something odd was detected during one of my regular CT scans; after several more scans and an extremely painful biopsy, the conclusion was pretty inevitable.

Igor is back; my cancer has returned.

The good news is that Igor hasn't returned as quite as pervasively as before--there is one 2cm by 1cn tumor in my liver, as opposed to the eight large tumors that I originally had. There are a few tiny cells that do fluoresce under PET scan, but are too small to see with CT or MRI scans, so the one "large" tumor is the only one of real concern.

The bad news is that the tumor is deep within my tumor, and after consulting a liver specialist today, the risks of surgery far outweigh any benefit. So, it's another six months of chemotherapy.

In addition, it turns out that I have an "artifact" on my spleen (early I had been that it was on my liver, but the specialist reviewed the MRI, and concluded that it was, in fact, on my spleen). It does not fluoresce under PET scan, so it is currently considered benign. Currently.

So, it's back to the grind: chemo on every other Monday, carry around a diffusion pump until Wednesday, and then wait for the symptoms to wear down. For six months.

So it goes.