Amyloidosis

As I mentioned last year, Cindy and her mother (my wonderful mother-in-law) were diagnosed and treated for breast cancer. They've both done well and have not needed further treatment since it ended late last year.

But because of her brush with cancer, the doctor's were especially careful when they found a growth in her nasal cavity and decided to remove it and look closely at what they found. When the lab work on what was removed came back, even the surgeon had never heard of the results - Amyloidosis. It's a relatively rare disease where certain proteins take on a distorted, insoluble form are deposited in the organs and fatty tissues where they do nothing and can prevent the ordinary functioning of the organs. It can be very serious if the Amyloids are deposited in major organs. There is information available from the Mayo Clinic and from the Amyloidosis Foundation.

Cindy was referred to a special Amyloid clinic at the Boston Medical Center and had to undergo two days of testing. Because she was afraid she'd miss the kids too much and because they kids would miss her too much for those two days, we decided to go up as a family and stay in Boston one night to make it easier on Cindy. After all the testing, it looked like the news was mostly good - the Amyloid deposits seem to be limited to her nasal cavity are are relatively harmless. But in all the testing, two unusual nodules were found - one on her Thyroid and another in a lung. So, we had to go back again today for further tests and another CAT scan. We'll find out more about this but, once again, the doctors, nurses and other medical workers were fantastic. They are very organized and really work well together as a team. There doesn't seem to be any conflict between the various departments. They all work to complement each other. As we await the test results, it really helps to have confidence in the medical team.