PET Scan happened yesterday and a few hours later I received the following email from my doctor:

Great News!!
PET scan normal with no evidence of Hodgkins disease
Will see you next week

Obviously this is great news indeed.

This IS great news, but doesn’t mean that we are out of the woods yet. It just means that we are still on a right track towards the “C word” (in this case “Cured”).

This news still isn’t the deciding factor regarding whether or not I will be undergoing radiation treatments. From what I understand, part of the benefits of radiation are that it will help break up and reduce some of the scar tissue that was left behind by the tumor in my chest. We’ll learn more about this when we meet with oncologist on Thursday.

Also, I just want to point out some key words in the phrasing here (its standard phrasing btw). “No evidence of Hodgkins disease.” No evidence of disease (abbreviated as NED) is a key step, but it’s not the end. It just means that at this point, I don’t have any active tumors. But remember, I just had my final chemo a week ago. Really I SHOULDN’T have any tumors, but that’s not to say that they won’t start forming again now that we’ve stopped treatments. With that in mind, the real test comes in three months after I have the first of my quarterly CAT Scans. If that one comes back as NED as well, then we have something.

So, enough of putting things back into perspective. This is still GREAT news!

Happy Friday indeed!