Heart Skipped a Beat...or FIVE!!!

Thankfully, I am not referring to Trent's heart with the title of this post.  I am referring to mine, yesterday, when Dr. Carr called.  I am not sure how many doctors call just to chit chat so when he called my heart skipped about five beats.  To make matters worse, I didn't get the call...one of the kids did.  Dr. Carr couldn't get them to understand, (it was probably Jonathan who picked up the phone) so he hung up.  I called his assistant, Jan, and she said she would have him call me back.  She then told me that Trent had been discussed in the Sarcoma Tumor Conference that morning.  There is a little bit of increased metabolic activity on Trent' hip that showed up on the PET scan.  The doctors all agreed that it is probably nothing but to be 100% sure, Trent needs to get a pelvic MRI done.  That is going to happen Thursday morning.

I finally got to talk to Dr. Carr late yesterday afternoon.  He really was calling to chit chat...kind of.  He had been told by Jan that we had some questions, which we did, so he wanted to call to give us a chance to have those questions answered.  I spent about five minutes on the phone with him and he reassured me that he was not too worried about the hip thing, and that it was all precautionary.

We then talked about the pericardium.  I had read the report of the cardiac MRI just hours before and had some concerns.  He told me he did too and he had spoken to Dr. Friedberg about it as well.  Dr. Friedberg thinks there is pericardial  involvement but not myocardial involvement.  Translation: a tumor has butted up to and eroded a portion of the pericardium but has not reached the heart.  He still believes it is worth the operation and that it is likely that only a portion of the pericardium will be removed.  This will all be verified during surgery.

So, we are still hopeful that everything is a 'go' and things are moving in the right direction.  It is most likely that surgery will be moved back to April 30 due to Dr. Friedberg's schedule, and could be bumped back a few days beyond that.  We are going to go ahead with chemo next week as planned.

The talk with Dr. Carr did calm me down a bit but I am still not sure whether or not I like to have the doctor call me instead of the other way around.  It's not good for my heart!