ams5796 wrote:I do this all the time. In fact, I just came home from a three month lung scan. The spots he saw three months ago were not there today. Yay! I was diagnosed with rectal cancer almost thirteen years ago and have had recurrences in my lungs three times. Twice I had VATS and once I had SBRT. My lungs aren't in great shape now, but for the most part I feel great. I have lots of scarring in my lungs from the recurrences and a MAC infection that they thought was a huge amount of mets. (long story, luckily it was an infection ) Lung mets usually grow slowly so I don't think waiting three months will be a problem at all. I also think in many instances there are ways to get rid of these mets depending on how many and where they are located. You asked in the above post what the odds are that it is an infection vs. mets. I think it is usually an inflammation or an infection. There is absolutely no reason to be upset now. Chances are it will be fine We think that what he saw in my lungs on the last scan (three months ago) was inflammation from a bad flu/cold that I had in March. It can take that long for the inflammation to clear up.
Wow thank you so much for this comment and so happy for you that you keep kicking cancer’s butt with these recurrences! So lung Mets are typically slow growing? She’s always had a 5mm spot that remained totally unchanged even through chemo when her tumor and lymph nodes were shrinking and now all of a sudden there’s a 13x9mm “density” in that area and they are telling us it’s either that spot grew or an “infectious infiltrate superimposed” over that spot. Praying it’s the latter.
With how long it took for your infection to clear up, do you think I’m wrong to have a PET in a month? I guess I’m hoping it’ll give us more info one way or another. If it lights up, do you think they’ll just say come back in X months and we will try again?