(+) Positive

Being a cancer patient means you go through a lot of testing.  For me its been fine needle aspirations, biopsies, CT’s, whole body nuke med scans, x-rays, and countless blood tests for calcium levels and tumor markers.  And then there are the side effects I've dealt with like cancer brain, loss of taste, hypo hell, and of course the most recent [and annoying] parotid gland swelling/dry mouth. 

Always you want the tests to come back negative or undetectable.  Always.

Today I got the news that one of my labs from last week came back positive.

Now before I start a panic, let me emphasize that these tests were NOT my tumor marker tests.  Those were drawn a few weeks ago and are still fantastically undetectable.  These most recent tests were ones to rule out the possibility of Sjogren’s syndrome  based on the salivary gland swelling evaluation and to assess the need for me to see a rheumatologist.  Most of these came back negative… one [just one] of the tests came back positive.

Yup, its on to another doctor who will most likely run more tests.  I have no idea what kinds of answers we may get…