had an appt this afternoon with the interventional radiologist at st tammany hospital. we all sat down with the pet scan images pulled up on the computer and mapped out a plan of attack. mom's appt will be thursday morning at 9am so she has to be at the hospital by 7am. she'll start out the day in the endoscopy department where they will start her IV and draw baseline lab work. the largest "spot" is about 10mm in size and is located between the 8th and 9th ribs on the right side. they will give her some medicine to relax her and take away the pain as they insert a needle (guided by CAT scan images) through her skin and into the mass to suck out the cells. (for you medicine peeps reading, they're going to consciously sedate her with versed and fentanyl and make her loopy:)) there will be a lab tech on hand to quickly review the specimen and make sure that they have a good cell sample. they will also take a few chest xrays before she goes home to make sure that they didn't inadvertently collapse the lung. the dr feels that we should have the pathology report back on friday afternoon and will be able to say whether or not this is metastatic cancer that is now in her lung. we got so lucky that the RN sitting in on the consult (who will be pushing meds on my mom on procedure day) is an old ER nurse who trained at a trauma center in houston!!!! we ended the appt by sitting around the table laughing and telling ER stories. she really put us at ease and hugged me and promised that she's going to take care of my mom like she were her own. i think we got a really good group of people working on my mom!!!!
i'm including a link that explains things way better than i can for those interested
http://www.answers.com/topic/ct-guided-biopsy
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