Good news and bad news (post scan)

Ok so here's the deal. I went and had the scan today. Everything went really well. Unfortunately, I don't know for sure if there's a problem with the parathyroid or not. I'll have to wait for Dr. Riddle to figure that one out. But, I did discover that I do NOT suffer from claustrophobia. In fact I completely fell asleep during the scan (even though I had a machine put about 1/4 an inch over my face for 30 mins). The only crummy part of the scan was that my nose itched the whole time and I wasn't supposed to move! For a moment I was able to forget about the possibility of dying from cancer because I was sure that the itch would kill me long before! Anyway, I got to see the results of both scans and I honestly couldn't tell what was going on. Here are some pictures of a typical sestamibi scan.

Here is what I saw on the scan. (nothing)

This is what I expected to see.

If there is a tumor it's extremely tiny, (which is good news) but if there is no tumor then my high calcium levels are coming from somewhere else. (which could be not so good news). The real good news is that we're leaving this joint and headed to Idaho for the weekend. Thanks for caring!

Sestamibi Scan

Hey, just an update. Tyson is scheduled for a Sestamibi scan tomorrow. He will be injected with radioactive protein at 10 AM and then go in for his scan at 2 PM. This will show which of the four parathyroid glands isn't functioning. We are excited to find out and get the ball rolling!

On the Mend

Things are starting to look up for us again! Easton's rash is healed! Yay! I guess the doctor was right, we just had to ride out that darn virus! I would not wish pityriasis rosea on anyone.

As for Tyson, he isn't exactly healed, but lots of people have been asking about him so I thought I'd hurry and post the latest. We were able to see the specialist last Wednesday because they had a cancellation. We really liked Dr. Riddle. He looked at Tyson's previous lab work and felt that since his calcium was so high and his parathyroid hormone (PTH) was in normal range that it was looking more like cancer (most likely bone or lung) than hyperparathyroidism. He ordered more blood tests and said he would schedule a PET/CT scan after he received those results. They called with the results of his blood work Friday night while we were in the temple and couldn't leave a message. So that made for a long weekend of wondering!

We found out this morning that his calcium was still very high at 11.7 (normal is 8.4-10.1 -- this was down from 11.9 in his last test) and his PTH was 106 (The normal range is 12-88 -- this is way up from his last test). To sum it all up this is good news. It points more towards a benign parathyroid tumor than to cancer. The doctor is going to call Tyson and discuss it all a little later today and hopefully get a scan scheduled. That's all we know for now. It's not much, but we feel good about the way things are heading. Thanks for your concern everybody!