Just to add to my previous entry on the subject, I am now in the hospital. Incidentally: wow, they have a network connection! What can I say? I've already done a bunch of exams. I'm starting with another cycle of chemotherapy in two days.
One thing I hadn't mentioned in the other post, about my tumor, is that as the doctor explained, it is a particularly bastard one (not that I can think of one to be described as "funny", or "nice"!) in that unlike e.g. with breast cancer, where you have a whole tumoral mass entirely constituted of mutated cells, mine is charachterized by having them interspersed within the normal bone matrix. This both makes them hardly reachable pharmacologically and causes the tumor itself not to have clearly defined borders.
Moreover osteosarcomas do not produce metabolites and, unlike other sarcomas, there is no known genic sequence responsible of the mutation. So future diagnoses will rely heavily on just verifying whether disease sites in my bones extended or were stationary. Actually, the realistic purpose of the therapy is to bring the pathology back to a quiescence status. Thus I asked whether this excludes the complete eradication of it. The answer is that no, it doesn't, but for intellectual honesty they can't guarantee that it will be achieved, either. Therefore I suppose the real nightmare will be going to future controls, with the continuous risk of having to listen someone say the disease had a reprise...
