Wednesday, December 9, 2009

from yesterday: Dr. Boockvar's white board, showing Mom's cancer (shaded circle near center of brain)



COMMENT: Dr. Boockvar drew the above to illustrate what he saw happening with Mom's cancer based on the October 28 MRI done at the National Cancer Institute. His circle is close to the sites for both the first and second growths. Now that I think of it, he made no mention of the third growth, the one caught by Dr. Fine (who was reviewing this same MRI series) after the NCI radiology department missed it.

Is it possible that Dr. Boockvar missed the third mass, too? It must be hard to see if the pros can miss it. We may need to make sure that Dr. Boockvar's team is fully aware of the third growth, which would have gotten larger since 10/28, assuming-- as I do-- that the carboplatin hasn't done a thing for Mom.

But what bugs me about the above diagram is that it also seems to indicate that the Avastin has been less than spectacular, despite rhetoric to the contrary. The growth shown above is right where we thought the Avastin had been doing the most good (this is how the 10/28 MRI was interpreted for us at NCI: the Avastin had been mopping up the remains of the first and second tumors). It would be nice to have both doctors, Fine and Boockvar, in the same room so we could interrogate them about how they're reading and understanding these MRI images.


_

No comments: