UCSF

Yesterday we had a good flight to Oakland. Since we had no time constraints, we decided to travel like we do in Europe and took the BART and a long, interesting city bus ride right to our hotel in SF (at the corner of Presidio and California Streets). This morning we took a short taxi ride to the UCSF Medical Center to see Dr. Eisele (who is the chairman of their Otolaryngology Department). His nurse and a Resident doctor met with Curt before Dr. Eisele. Dr. Eisele reminded us of the neurosurgeon (Dr. Delashaw) at OHSU - very personable and to the point. We have heard good things about him and saw a certificate on the waiting room wall saying he was selected as one of "The Best Doctors" in the U.S. by some magazine. He came in and after some initial banter said "Let us cut to the chase". He wanted Curt to tell about his symptoms and his two surgeries, etc. He said it is very rare for squamous carcinoma to first show up on the trigeminal nerve. It needs to start somewhere else. This is what the OHSU doctors find perplexing too. Dr. Eisele wants to see the pathology slides and the MRI scans, etc., from both surgeries. So after a few phone calls we were finally able to arrange for OHSU to send these things. We brought all the other medical records for them to look at later. Dr. Eisele knows Dr. Wax and said he did a good job on Curt. He thought Curt was healing very well. Dr. Eisele thought the PET scan in April could have occurred when things were still too unsettled and could give inconclusive results. Curt did have an MRI in April too. Dr. Eisele wants Curt to have another MRI as soon as we return to Oregon to see if there are any changes. He thinks it is good that Curt has maintained his weight (around 155 lbs.) for the past couple months and that Curt has no pain or other symptoms now. Like OHSU, UCSF also has a tumor board that meets once a week. Dr. Eisele will be gone next week, so his next meeting with them will be on June 25. If Curt can get his MRI on June 23, they could send it over night for them to look at before their board meeting. So it looks like we might have some answers after that and decide when and if to do chemo.
We were able to get a taxi to the airport after Curt's appointment and had a good flight to Chicago. The weather isn't too bad here (so far). It was beautiful in San Francisco. Tomorrow we see Sam play baseball. Curt pitched for our coed softball team on Sunday night and got 3 hits. It was a good game that we won in the last inning.