Weary to my bones

Just heard those words as I listened to Willie Nelson’s rendition of Paul Simon’s American Tune. I’ve just spent the day doing back-to-back MRI/MRS (a 90-minute procedure) in a 3 Tesla MRI machine at UCSF’s Advanced Imaging facility in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, just south of Pac Bell Park (or whatever corporate-sponsor name it carries these days).

It has been a long day, and yes, I (and Linda) are exhausted.

In the cancer drill – the endless rounds of tests and results and therapy options that befuddle and torment and worry patients and family – today was pretty benign. We don’t have the full results but early prognosis is that, while there are small changes in the MRI image of my brain, they are not particularly consistent with tumor growth. MRS data, which can pinpoint actively growing cell volumes (aka tumors) will be available in a few days.

Dr. Susan Chang, our very bright neuro-oncologist, who tends to be conservative and proactive on my treatment, saw no reason not to go to France. So, that’s my story, and I’m sticking with it…