Mostly good news

I saw the surgeon on Monday for a checkup and Ruth on Tuesday for chemo. Albert & I stressed to each of them that we want to treat whatever has been causing this pain that I've been having for more than a month, and not just keep taking the pain meds forever. The surgeon suggested that there may be an infection in the clavicle, and Ruth wanted to rule out a tumor, so she sent me for a CT scan on Tuesday. Good news is a) no tumor and b) no bone infection. Either of those would have meant 6 weeks of treatment, either daily radiation or daily IV antibiotics. Ruth and the radiologist are pretty sure that there is an infection in the soft tissue around the clavicle, and she is working with the infectious diseases folks to figure out whether to take a culture (which they do under CT guidance, argghh, more procedures) to determine what the infection is or treat "empirically", and just throw antibiotics at it. Will know more today. Other good news is that the first Gemzar/Carboplatin treatment brought the liver numbers back down to about 1000, from 4000. Good sign.