The Big 'C'- Update

Sonny Boy, Lucki Duck and Mom

As many of you know, my mother was recently diagnosed with stage 1 lung cancer. For those of you who haven't been playing along, you can get caught up by reading my previous posts on the subject here and here.

My mother has been through a battery of tests on her heart the past 10 days, to make sure she is able to handle the two hour procedure in which she will be under a general anesthesia.

She got the okay from her cardio doc last Friday, and the procedure will take place tomorrow at 9am. What the doctors will do tomorrow is called "Electromagnetic Navigation Bronchoscopy" (Superdimension) The lung doc says this has been around for about 2 years. They will go through the breathing tube down through the windpipe and down into the lung using something like a "GPS system". They will be inserting an 18K gold bar that will go next to the lesion and will act as a marker for when they do the radiation treatments with the Cyber Knife.

If you knew my Mom and her love of gold jewelry, you understand that the idea of having gold inside her body is pretty funny. And NO, I don't know if she gets to keep it once it comes out, but if she does, I'm almost certain she'll find a way to make jewelry out of it...

Lung doc says 2 - 3% of these procedures end up in a collapsed lung, whereas 20 - 30% of needle biopsies end up in collapse-which hers did when they did the needle biopsy.  They don't want to risk doing any other procedures involving needles in the lung.

They will do another CT scan next week to check that the marker is still in place and then they will actually mark her on the outside and come up with a treatment plan and schedule for radiation.

Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers tomorrow morning and send those positive vibes her way.