Second opinion.

That weeekend was a very difficult one for us. We had received devastating news, and we had no time to process it because we had to decide on the travel and the treatment immediately. We cried a lot. We talked to our kids. We read as much as we could comprehend on the internet. We re-read our notes from the oncologist meeting. By Sunday we had cancelled the trips, but were not yet resigned to the diagnosis.

We are fortunate to live near Roswell Park Cancer Institute, a large national cancer center, and we decided to get a second opinion there. Barry found the email address for the top cancer guy in my disease, and sent him a short email on Monday asking for his help. Dr M.C. wrote right back asking for our phone number and called immediately!

He was so kind and so helpful. We talked for half an hour. He had me read him some of the lab results over the phone and discussed my likely diagnosis. He thought it was likely correct although there might be other very similar possibilities. He suggested other chemotherapy regimens that were less toxic.

The most important thing he said is that treatment is never so urgent that there is no time for a second opinion. He suggested that we could get my slides from the bone marrow aspiration and biopsy re-read at Roswell Park and not have to repeat the tests themselves.

Dr M.C. was on his way to a conference overseas and said he would set us up with a colleague for our second opinion. His group's patient scheduler would call us.