Nothing like getting a bad MRI report at 4:30 on a Friday and not being able to speak to your doctor until Wednesday.

A lot of you have been wondering what came out of that MRI report that I got that seemed to have really bad results.

It came through MyChart, and of course I opened it up and read it. And then I read it again, and then I gave it to ChatGPT and read that a few times.

And what it said was that my cancer was getting bigger and spreading. To me, that made sense. The pain is coming from the spread cancer, which the MRI report is saying is now in my blood vessels, and that’s why I’m in pain. The reason I had this MRI was that I was in excruciating pain the day after my first chemo treatment.

So, was the chemo making my cancer spread?

That’s what I wanted to know.

But I had to do the whole weekend before I could talk to a doctor. I saw the doctor on Wednesday at my third chemo appointment.

My Doctor: The chemo doesn’t spread the cancer. That’s a fallacy. The cancer causes the cancer to spread.

Okay, but what about the insane amount of pain I felt the day after my first chemo treatment? Like, is the timing not suspicious that it was literally after the first treatment all of a sudden?

My Doctor: No. Purely. That’s very coincidental. Coincidence, like it’s still changing, is not a concern. You can’t give up on the treatment yet.

Shouldn’t we see some sort of result after two treatments?

My Doctor: You really haven’t had a lot of treatment yet.

Does this show that the chemo is not working?

My Doctor: I don’t think we could say it’s not working yet. It’s too early. It was too soon for the MRI. In a normal world, you never would have had an MRI when you had it.

He did say that there was a period between my diagnosis MRI and when I started chemo that it could have spread during that time.

My Doctor: I think we just have to continue the chemo.

He said to just keep going. I’m glad he’s not worried. I’m trying to feel that way, too.

Thank you all for talking me off a ledge. It really, it really helped save me.

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