10/15/03 = 6,002,498

Thank you and congrats Raconteur!

WOW! Congrats Raconteur and team syng.org! Well done and thanks.

Bah, we've lost all hope of catching you up now...

Congrats

Cheers, gang! This whole thing has become much more meaningful since I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease in March.

prayers are with you... how have you been doing?

Pretty good... I had a REALLY tough go with both chemo and radiation. Going through some tests now to see how badly my heart and lungs were damaged by the chemo drugs, and then in about 5 weeks I go for a PET scan to see how effective the treatment was.

Good luck then, please let me know how they turn out.

Cheers, Allen. Will do.

Had a scare last week... was having some bad pains in my chest and went to my radiation oncologist to get checked out. He sent me for a CT because he said what I was describing sounded like impingement from tumor growth. The CT revealed what appeared to be new cancerous tissue in my chest, which meant that my treatment (15 weeks of one of the most aggressive chemo protocols there is and 25 consecutive radiation treatments) was not totally effective.

So I was sent in for an early PET scan (radio-active glucose injected into your body is a weird thing ). The reuslts... the new "growth" was suspected to be inflammation from the radiation!!! They cannot say for sure that I am cancer-free, but the PET looked clear. So now I go in in one month for a CT to see if the "inflammation" has reduced in size, and if so, I get checked every 4-6 months for any neo-plastic activity. If, after 5 years of this, I am clear, I am officially "cured"!

That's the latest update!

Anything new?

Well, the last CT showed several nodes in my chest that are still enlarged. However, several others have shrunk, and the current thinking is that the enlarged nodes are just scar tissue that will remain that size indefinitely.

So, I am in for another CT in 3 weeks, and if that is clear I am on the 4-6 month check-up schedule.

Thanks for asking!

Ahh.. that's good news then, thank you for the update. Are you still in treatment, or are you on just a checkup program? My mom is a chemo nurse here in texas, has been for >24 years now...

Hi Allen,

I finished chemo in June, and radiation in August. I am on a check-up program right now, unless this suspect tissue in my chest proves to be more than we currently think it is, but that doesn't seem likely.

Basically, I have decided that I am done with the whole cancer thing. Tried it, didn't like it.

Thanks for your concern. I appreciate it!