The cancer doctor who saw Amy thinks her history is intriguing and thinks it is "likely" that the cause of the current problem is an infection or a problem with her immune system. She referred Amy to an immunologist, a doctor who can better diagnose under- or over-function of the immune system. Amy will see him next Friday down at Mayo again. She also said leukemia is absolutely not on the table. Praise the Lord! Unfortunately, lymphoma is. She thought it "unlikely" that it was lymphoma - and told me that, with what she knew yesterday, there was about a 15% chance that it would turn out to be lymphoma. I didn't like that number very much, I'll admit! But I've gotten over it and decided to dwell on the "unlikely" instead of the statistic for now. She sent Amy immediately for blood work for several of the most likely infectious causes, especially cat scratch disease since we have two kittens, as well as a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia or a raging case of lymphoma.
This morning, she called me to let me know the chest x-ray was normal: as in, no pneumonia, and no raging case of lymphoma - which unfortunately doesn't rule out early lymphoma. The blood work was also all negative - it still doesn't look suspicious for an infection. The doctor commented that with each other cause ruled out, lymphoma does seem more likely. But for now she is going to start Amy on a 10 day course of antibiotics to see if the lymph nodes get smaller, and if they do, we will know it was infectious, although we will probably never know the cause. If they stay the same or get bigger, she will need surgical removal of the largest lump for further diagnosis and treatment. Hopefully immunology will have some insight as well next week.
Thanks for all your prayers! We will keep you updated as things progress!
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