[2022-01-13] Medical oncologist follow-up
Today, I had a follow-up call with Dr. Gotfrit, the medical oncologist who had requested my pelvic MRI.
Dr. Gotfrit confirmed what my radiation oncologist, Dr. Jin, had said on Monday, namely that the MRI showed no evidence of cancer in my pelvic lymph nodes. Given that, there would be no benefit in my being treated with chemotherapy, she said. Dr. Gotfrit also noted that she, Dr. Jin and my surgeon, Dr. Boushey, had consulted, and they agreed that radiation was the best way forward.
Beyond confirming the good news from my MRI, Dr. Gotfrit made a number of positive statements that left me feeling very hopeful about my prognosis. Unprompted, she stated that she expects that I will have this issue behind me very shortly and that my chances of having any problems associated with this cancer in the future are very small.
I was so pleased to hear her say this, unaccustomed as I am to reassuring projections related to cancer.
In the ovarian cancer world, doctors make no predictions about the future, which I completely understand given the statistics related to that particular type of cancer. My sense of perianal skin cancer, especially addressed in its early stages as mine was, is that it is curable. Though we often talk about cancer as though it were one disease, the term refers to more than 100 different illnesses. What they have in common is uncontrolled growth and spread of abnormal cells.
Though the results of my MRI were exactly what Dr. Gotfrit expected they would be, it was wonderful to receive confirmation that this was indeed the case.
