First, the good news: the results of the PET scan confirmed what the doctors saw on the other scans – cancer only at the original site of the tumor on her spine.

In other news, we got a call from Rachel’s oncologist. Doctors at Dana Farber in Boston had been reviewing Rachel’s case and they think that she might actually have osteosarcoma and not mesenchymal chondrosarcoma. They are having their pathologist run more tests to give yet a third opinion on her tumor, so once again we are waiting on pathology.

Osteosarcoma, though still rare, is the most common type of sarcoma, whereas mesenchymal chondrosarcoma makes up less than 1% of sarcomas. The treatment of the two sarcomas are different, so we really need them to get the diagnosis right asap, since she’s already had one round of what is possibly the wrong chemo. The doctor said that the prognosis is about the same for both cancers, but where osteosarcoma is much more common, there is much more research and proven treatment protocols. Osteosarcoma also has less of a tendency to recur years down the road, so to our minds, this would be a relatively better diagnosis for Rachel. She also wouldn’t need to be treated with cyclophosphamide any longer, which was the chemo that most affected fertility (though they all do to some degree.)