Meet THE MAN! - April 19, 2010

This morning was the Haddad family's field trip to MDA to visit with our Sarcoma Doctor. MDA had looked over the biopsy and studied my case. We were hungry for the doctor to fill us in.

The way the Sarcoma Dept works at MDA is that a committee of 20-25 doctors/pathologists/radiologists etc meet together in a conference room and discuss my files, records and scans and come to one verdict. The doctor then communicates the results to the patient.

This is where we were. We hadn't heard detailed PETScan results, nor were we sure of the exact Sarcoma I had. While we were not fully in the dark, many pieces to the puzzle were missing. Thus, we anxiously awaited the doctor's arrival. From what we heard from various sources (including a few out-of-state friends), my doctor turned out to be a world-renown Sarcoma doctor, #1 in the world. His name was Dr. S. Patel. I won't lie by saying this didn't provide some relief from within.

He told us my Sarcoma was complicated and pretty rare and that MDA would need to do another biopsy before they can determine the exact 'scholarly name' for it. The PETScan results showed an aggressive tumor, and Dr. Patel was more in favor of starting Chemotherapy immediately rather than trying to figure out what cancer name mine belonged to. The treatments would be identical regardless of what the biopsy conveyed. Although it's a bit more bizarre staging a localized tumor, he thought my tumor was a stage 3 because it was an aggressive tumor and because it had started putting pressure on some organs but did not invade any of them and all seemed safe. He was adamant about getting started asap though.

Time was of the essence. My Chemotherapy was to begin 2 days later....

His treatment plan would include 6 cycles of intense Chemotherapy: 'the most intense Chemotherapy known to man' as he quoted, whereas after every 2 cycles a PETScan is done to show the progress. [Every cycle is 21 days, and the first 5 days are devoted to Chemotherapy].

After the 6 cycles are complete, hopefully the Chemotherapy would have done its job of shrinking the tumor. At that point, they would do a surgery to take it out. After surgery, I would dive into another 2-4 cycles of Chemotherapy.....so it seemed like an 8-10 month process.

We left his office with mixed feelings as it is going to be a tough journey, but happy to embark on a mission that can destroy the invader of my pelvis!

I was then asked to take a few X-Rays before heading out for the day:

Sleeping time: 4 hours.