| How Mimi Was Diagnosed |
| Many of you have asked how Mimi was diagnosed. And no, she was not a smoker. The short answer is that it was seen on an MRI. Here's the long, convoluted story: Nearly 30 years ago, Mimi had Hodgkins Disease (cancer of the lymph nodes). She was successfully treated with radiation at Stanford and has returned there every year since for follow up. When she returned in November 2004, there was some unusual "streaking" on a chest x-ray that the radiologist and radiation oncologist thought looked like pneumonia. When Mimi asked the radiation oncologist if it could be lung cancer, he emphatically replied "no." He ordered a follow up chest x-ray every month or two to see if the streaking was improving, and it was. Over a year ago Mimi began feeling something unusual in her chest area. A gastroenerologist diagnosed esophogitis and prescribed prevacid which seemed to relieve the discomfort for about a year. Mimi returned to him a couple months ago and he diagnosed a hiatal hernia. On a separate, but related track, three years ago Mimi had a nonmalignant tumor removed from her spinal cord. Ever since she has experienced symptoms of numbness, tingling and upper back pain. In March, a physiatrist (sports medicine doctor) suggested that Mimi have an MRI of her spine. The spine looked fine, but the radiologist noted something unusual, off to the side, in Mimi's lung. The Stanford radiologist thought it might just be scarring from the radiation 29 years earlier. He ordered another chest x-ray and that appeared normal. As a precaution, he also ordered a PET/CT scan and that's when they found several tumors in and around Mimi's right lung, possibly caused by her treatment for Hodgkin's disease. |