Results

Well, looks like it is what the doctors expected. Osteosarcoma right at the bottom of my left thigh bone.

Apparently, I’m lucky ‘cos it hasn’t spread.

Yay, chemotherapy.

The Scans

Being diagnosed with gout is one thing, but then having it re-diagnosed as a tumor, well, that’s just scary. I guess I’m still kinda hoping that it is gout. My referred doctor was taking no chances and, hence, sent me to various hospitals to be poked and prodded.

Over the next two days, I was exposed to an MRI, CT and bone scan and blood tests.

The Bone and CT Scan
For a bone scan they inject you with a small amount of radioactive isotope. I’m not quite sure which element it is but it only has a half life of about 6 days. (If you want all the details check out this site http://www.brighamandwomens.org/nuclearmedicine/patient/bone.aspx. I’m not sure if it’s 100% accurate but it describes the process well enough). Anyway, then I sit for about 3 hours waiting for this thing to diffuse throughout my body.

Now, 3 hours is a long time and I had a lot on my mind and I eventually had the realization that I was radioactive. Now, I don’t know about you, but I know that most comic super heroes always changed when something radioactive was present. Soooo…. I gave all my superpowers a try;

Telekinesis (nope)
Telepathy (nope)
Invisibility (nope)
Invulnerability; ouch! (nope)
Super speed; did I mention I had pain in my knee?? (Nope)

Nothing worked. Don’t believe anything you read in those comic books.

Once the time is up they lie you down on a ‘bed’ and the machine scans your whole body. Then it’s over. A real anti-climax. Although, it does show the tumor up pretty well.

The CT scan was pretty unremarkable as well. I never even saw the results to that.

The MRI Scan
Now, the MRI was a little bit more interesting. I guess you’ve all seen it on tv. You lie down in a kind of tube thing. That’s it. The nurse warned me that I’d be there for quite a few minutes (40, she estimated) and that I should have a snooze if I wanted. Well, I was there for a very long time. About 2 hours according to Roz. Remember, I was not able to move except for the few times they came in to change my position.

I’ll say this though; there was absolutely no way I could have had a snooze. That machine makes a lot of noise. It was like the ending scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. They don’t tell you that on ‘House’ do they?

I had my biopsy done on Monday (NZ time) and I’m now waiting for the results. Either way there’s gonna be an operation involved to remove the stupid thing.

Waiting is so much fun isn’t it?

Hi There!!

Hi. I’m glad you’ve taken the time to read this. I’m writing it cos I think there might be a few people who’ll want to ask me questions about… things… and here is where the answers will be. Sorry to be cryptic but you probably know what I’m talking about already.

Well. Life is surprising isn’t it? Someone once said to me that he really only wanted surprises at christmas and birthdays. At other times it’s usually not a pleasant experience.

I’m not sure if I ever agreed with that point of view but I did get a bit of a surprise early last week.

Let me start at the beginning. As some of you may know I visited England for a short time over christmas last year. (That wasn’t a surprise). One particularly cold day while I was there I began feeling an aching pain in my left knee. Being the manly person that I am (stop laughing), I shook it off and disregarded it as my body complaining after I had promised not to return to England at that time of year ever again.

No further event occurred before I returned to NZ and the family and I had a pleasant, but quick, holiday.

The footy season was just ending when I returned and I play for a team of mature guys. No, I’m neither the oldest, nor the worst. Suffice it to say, we finished at the bottom of the table this year. But I digress. My knee had not really improved and I realised that running was proving really difficult. So much so, in fact, that I couldn’t play after 5 minutes on the pitch.

Yes, some of my team mates may say that’s no different from any other time I’ve played but this time I couldn’t go back on. I was in real pain.

So I went to the doctor.

He said it was …. gout.

I was not impressed. As far as I was concerned, gout was a form of arthiritis. I’d only just turned 41 years old. Old age was taking hold of me rather early, I thought.

What was really painful (even more so than the pain in my knee) was the fact that gout is diet related. So I was told to stop eating red meat, sea food and beer!!!

:-0

I guess that still left KFC.

Anyway, After a few weeks of this attempted diet, and several courses of painkillers, I finally had some x-rays done. Unfortunately, this revealed a ‘growth’ in my knee joint area. By growth, I mean ‘tumor’.

Now don’t be too concerned, I’m ok. I’m not talking about anything ‘terminal’. I’m just going through the motions at the moment to determine if the growth is malignant or not. I’ll enter some details about that experience later. Suffice it to say, I’m in good hands and the NZ health system is treating me well.

I think that’s all I’ll say for now. I promise I’ll fill in the rest of the details as the days go by.