He gave us the quick read of the MRI results and Mary has a 5mm (less than 1/4th inch) spot on her 11th vertebrae. The radiologist's report was "Too Small To Characterize" aka TSTC. He said that its behavior is not indicative of a cancerous growth. Mary has had this upper back pain on and off since June. A cancer generally does not have an off cycle, it simply continues to grow. And, the size vs the length of time would indicate that it isn't really growing.
The bone scan scheduled for Monday may add further clarity but because this thing is so small, it may not. All we can do it step through it and see where it leads us.
Mary had not taken the prescription med since Wednesday morning--it caused her to reject her breakfast. Tuesday evening for bed she took a full pill and that dose seemed to send her into the painful stomach regime that carried into Wednesday. Her tummy was trashed for the rest of Wednesday but her tummy was fine on Thursday and so was her back with just advil and tylenol. She was preparing our dinner as I got home last night so she was doing pretty good. She was still avoiding the prescription pain med.
Mary woke up this morning about 4AM because of the terrible back pain. At 4:30AM today, Mary fixed herself a protein rich breakfast with a half-pill pain med chaser. It cut the pain down and taking the pill with a protein rich meal appears to have substantially helped the tummy problem. She is cutting the pills in half to minimize the dose. That seems to work. I think Mary needs to "graze" so there is always food in her stomach. My amateur opinion is keeping the stomach from never really being empty is a big benefit to preventing the pain cycles.
All in all, she is doing pretty good. We do want to know what this 5mm thingy on the vertebrae is and hopefully Monday's bone scan will shed some additional light on the subject.
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