The pet scan showed two bright lumps in my neck. We'd already seen the one on the front. The second is deeper--you can't see it but I have placed my fingers on it. It hurts only when I press on it. It is located about halfway between my ear and my spine (going around my neck) and positioned about halfway between ear-level and collar-level vertically.
It has been caught very early, whatever it is. There's a small chance it is a lymph infection or malfunction (it *feels* like a 10% to 20% chance), with most of the rest being different kinds of cancers. And if it is cancer, it is not the crazy-fast-moving kind. (I'd say it has been growing at about the paced it did in April 2017, and I've already reached the diagnostic level that it took until June 2017. So we're moving faster and the lump is progressing the same.
Just as I was happy to skip sonogram and CT scan and go right to PET, I'm happy that we'll skip the Fine Needle Aspiration (or FNA--a skinny needle) and go right to a Core needle biopsy (a big diameter--call it a matchstick size sample)
Last time we "tried to get away with" only doing the FNA and, when that supplied too little tissue to give a cancer diagnosis, we jumped up to a surgical biopsy (under general anesthesia).
I hope this time we get it all done with one procedure and in half the time. The Core biopsy (scheduled for this coming Thursday) should get enough material that they can both look at the cell types and maybe do some genetic testing (to see how close or far, mutation-wise) it is to being the "same" or a "new" cancer.
The core biopsy is done with just local numbing, and there's no prep diet and I can drive myself home afterwords (was tempted to bike, but I think I'll have some hole-closure stitches to worry about)
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