My CT scan results - you can call me Mr. Clean

Hello,

It has been over a year since my surgery, so it was time for a CT scan of my chest, abdomen, and pelvis. The short story is that there was no evidence of disease found and the scans came back totally clean. I am very happy about that however it doesn't mean I can relax my focus on my health. Absolutely not. Statistically 80% of recurrences happen in the first two years, so I have at least another year to go before I want to even think about easing up. I still need to be very vigelent with my health. More on this in the next post... but first here are some highlights of the scan:

(I will be adding some interesting pics of the scan shortly.)

All of my organs appear unremarkable, meaning there is nothing odd about them. One interesting thing is that there are surgical clips still inside of me, which I guess will be there for the rest of my life, where the large intestine was reconnected.

My Oncologist tells me that I will not need another CT scan for two years - provided my blood tests continue to remain stable. Furthermore if my blood test remains excellent three months from now, I can start making arrangements to get the port in my chest removed.

I should say that I don't even feel the thing and I am not in any hurry to get it removed, but it will be good if the time is right- Just another step in the process of healing, recovering, and moving on with my life...

With that plan on the horizon, I met with a plastic surgeon to discuss what my scars will look like and what he can do to minimize them. I will research this further, but at the time that I have the port removed, I might have him step in to close up the wound. He told me that the skin where the port was located is fatigued because a foreign body was under it for so long, the skin has been stretched, and in general the scar wont look great without plastic surgery, a procedure referred to as "scar revision." The plastic surgeon may also revise the scar that is located on my lower abdomen, although he told me that he already considered it a darn good scar. The problem that I have with that scar is, as he explained it, the skin has been attached to the abdomen wall and there is no layer of fat right beneath it (compared to normally). Therefore when I sit or bend a certain way, it looks like it is dented or creased -and to me it doesn't look so attractive. Since I am single, I might want to do something about it. He would go in and separate the skin from the muscle wall and use a technique to restore the layer of fatty tissue that is normally sandwiched in there, then sew up the skin using plastic surgery stitches so that the scar would be quite minimized, and the appearance restored- not 100% but much better. This is all a personal choice and is not medically necessary, so I dont know if, when the time comes, I will actually do this... The ballpark out-of-pocket cost is about $1500.00.

What else? Well summer is definitely coming to a close here. It sure went fast. I am not looking forward to winter at all. Instead of biking I will be switching to swimming laps indoors for exercise, along with continuing to lift weights, yoga, and I am actually trying to find some other things to do. Typically winter is a time where I dont exercise as much I need to. I don't belong to a gym, but I may have to look around and see what is out there. Any suggestions? My finances still need healing from all of this too.