Sitting on pins and needles

The time between June 30 and July 7 over the endlessly long Fourth of July weekend was living hell for my parents and me.
On 6/30/11, I had a MRI scan at the 3Tesla MRI at the El Camino hospital in Mountain View. The next day (7/01/11) my parents and I drove up to UCSF at Parnassus to meet with one of the neuro-oncologists (Dr. Nicholas Butowski, who is standing in for my usual doctor, who is on vacation). This had been my ninth MRI since the end of chemo-radiation. None of those had showed any tumor recurrence, and so we were prepared for a routine discussion of the latest MRI. The good doctor then stunned us, saying that the MRI showed a recurrence of my cancer at a size of about 2.2 x 2.1 x 1.3 cm^3 in the exactly same location where the first and second tumors (glioblastoma multiforme) had been. We were devastated, and our family had a very miserable Fourth of July weekend. Dr. Sarah Nelson, a world-renowned expert in radiology and biological imaging at UCSF managed to get for me a "research-grade" MRI scheduled for 7/6/11 -this time at UCSF Mission Bay. Their research grade MRI has many more capabilities, including perfusion and diffusion studies and spectroscopy of metabolites, with the ultimate goal to distinguish between tumor tissue, scar tissue, or a treatment effect.
On 7/7/11, my parents and I met with my neurosurgeon, Dr Andy Parsa at 9am at UCSF, to discuss the latest MRI from 7/6/11. Andy immediately started to talk about wanting to do another surgery.  “It would be really easy”, he said - "just to see what it is that is showing up in the MRI." My parents and I felt very uneasy and helpless.
Fortunately, the UCSF team had its weekly tumor board meeting on that afternoon of 7/7, where they discussed my situation. Besides the neurosurgeons, and neuro-oncologists, Dr. Sarah Nelson was present as well. In the end, all members of the tumor board agreed that I don't have a cancer recurrence – rather what is seen in the MRI is a treatment effect  (i.e. immune response from my body).

It is hard to describe what a relief that news was to us.

So my parents and I have been decompressing slowly, and I for one had the first good nights sleep on 7/7 since 6/30/11!
But it was a wakeup call, to be prepared for the worst and to proactively consider the whole arsenal of treatment options, well before I am forced to undergo a third emergency tumor resection.