Visit with Oncologist

Today I meet with the oncologist, Dr. William Grow at Florida Hospital. He explained the types of treatments that are available for me and gave his recommendation. The three options are, 1) Observation, for the 1st year I would visit the doctors office every 1-2 months to have blood work and a chest x-ray to check the enlarged lymph nodes, I would also have a CT scan every 2-3 months for the 1st year. As the years progress, as long as there is no change, I would continue to visit the doctor once every 2 months in the 2nd year, 3 months in the 3rd year and so on. 2) Surgery, a procedure called retroperitoneal lymph node dissection, where the urologist would remove the enlarged lymph nodes from my body. This is a more evasive surgery than the first one and the recovery time is longer, however, the possible infected lymph nodes would be removed and from testing the lymph nodes they would know for sure if there was cancer in the lymph nodes. 3) Chemotherapy, I would have 3 treatments of chemotherapy to try to kill the possible cancer in the lymph nodes, however, if the lymph nodes do contain a cancer tumor and that tumor is teratoma the chemotherapy would not kill the tumor and surgery would have to be done anyways. The recommendation from the oncologist was to have the surgery. This option is the only sure way to find out if the lymph nodes are affected by the cancer and if it is, most likely the surgery will remove it and I should be in the clear after that. The other two options may work if the lymph nodes do not increase in size or the chemotherapy can kill the cancer if it is cancer. So, what am I going to do. First off, I am going to meet with another oncologist at MD Anderson hospital to get a second opinion, if that doctor suggest the same thing, then most likely I will have the surgery. So after I have met with the second doctor I will post what my decision is and what is going to happen next. I have posted a website below that explains the possible surgery I may have.

Thanks again for all your support.

http://www.acor.org/TCRC/rplnd.html