Ben's Good to Go!

Okay, I am sorry that it has taken me so long to get this info blogged, but to make things short and sweet, Ben has a clean bill of health and is going to be just fine.

We went into Duke to Dr. Jon Gockerman (Lymphoma specialist) on August 14th. Duke was very nice, (they had valet parking right in front of the Dr's offices!) and big! We all went and we brought a babysitter to sit with the kids while Ben and I (& Caroline) went into the Dr. He first saw his physicians assistant who checked him over thouroughly then took his scans (CT & PET) to look over with the Doctor, then they both came back in and Dr. Gockerman looked him over and asked him all kinds of things, and then explained to us his situation. We had our list of questions to ask, but by the time he was finished, they were all pretty much answered.
This rare form of lymphoma - Cutaneous large B-cell, shows up as lumps in the skin because the white blood cells, lymphocytes, instead of dying- go crazy, and build up in the skin. He said this is in the gray area of cancer, because the cells do this, but it is harmless, it will NOT go systemic like other cancers or lymphomas (unless it shows up below the knees). That is why nothing showed up on the scans (the little spot on the PET was probably from the surgery to remove it). All of his pathology reports were sent to a specialist in Boston whom Dr. Gockerman seemed to trust very much and she concluded the same as him, that this was Ben's situation.
We will still have regular checkups and from now on be more vigilant on finding and reporting irregularities.
Thank You Everyone again for all of your support, love and prayers! This made for quite a stressful summer, with a lot of ups and downs, thankfully it ended on the up side!