German Oncology

We met with the German oncologist in Kaiserslautern yesterday.  It was a bit odd going to a German hospital, but he was a good guy and the receptionist was great too.

We waited for almost 2 hours before getting in, but it wasn’t because of German socialized medicine.  We brought a CD of the CT scan and they were having trouble reading it in their computer.  Also, they wanted us to bring all of our records and pathology and such, but we didn’t get that word.  He met with us anyway and we told him the story.

He wants to get another CT scan, which we’re actually OK with.  The Landstuhl hospital can only scan at 5mm slice resolution, where the German system does 1mm slices.  It should get us a more accurate view of the areas that are in question.  He also wants to do some kind of spinal scan and another ultrasound.

Also, as we asked questions and discussed options, we were glad to hear that pretty much everything that Landstuhl had told us about treatments and protocols matched what the German oncology would do.  It seems that traditional medicine’s view of cancer and various treatments is quite standardized around the US and the western world.  We bounce most things off the American Cancer Society website and it all matches up.  I will say, though, that if we end up being stage 4, we will be looking hard at other, non-traditional options….

We’re tired of delays and we don’t want to rely on anyone to get Wendi’s records over to the German hospital, so we drove over to Landstuhl and picked up copies of everything in person, then drove back to Kaiserslautern and delivered the documents in-person to Dr. Link’s office.  He is meeting with all the other specialists on Tuesday, so we wanted him to have everything.  We will meet with him again on Wednesday.

I have to say I thought about the significance of this particular date in history.  I'm so proud to be a member of our nation's military as we commemorate the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings at Normandy and those great men who sacrificed so much for me, my family and our country.  I reflected on that as I walked through the streets of Germany on my way to visit a German doctor to help treat my wife for cancer, 70 years after my military forebears invaded their turf.  Interesting.

All of this made us a bit tardy getting to Jenna’s high school graduation!  We had perfect weather for the ceremony in FCK stadion, a German professional soccer stadium.  She did GREAT and we are very proud of her!