From: "Dr. D. Kossove" <doctordee@telkomsa.net>
To: "jim arnold" <jim.arnold@dsl.pipex.com>
Subject: 
Date: Thursday, November 06, 2003 8:48 PM


Date:    Tue, 4 Nov 2003 08:41:23 -0000
From:    Jim Arnold <jim.arnold@DSL.PIPEX.COM>
Subject: Re: Questions

1 - PET scans
These involve injecting a tracer and then scanning the body for uptake.
They will therefore show any cells which take in an abnormal amount
-usually these will be cancers. Opinions on the usefulness of Pet scans
are still divided so here is my 2 cents.
They are extremely sensitive but can give false positives ie active
cells that are not cancerous. Some people seem to suffer from more false
positives than others. A long time ago a doc (not an oncologist) told me
that what we need is not better machines but better radiographers - ie
its all down to the interpretation and its one more reason to make sure
you go to a sarcoma centre the radiologists there see a lot more of
these (whether that's Pet, CT or X). PET scans are basically 100%
accurate as every nodule they show has taken up an abnormal amount of
tracer - what is not 100% accurate is the interpretation of this
picture.

2 - depends on your definition of fully recovered and on how fit you
were before. In my wife's case (6 rounds of Adriamycin) after 3 months
she was back to normal or very close to it - but her hair took longer !

3 - can't really comment but remember that chemo kills all fast dividing
tissue and that includes germ cells. If it worries you get some sperm
stored but on the other hand don't automatically rely on it as your only
form of contraception. There should be no real difference long term in
shall we say performance!

 