Good news, bad news.... Same old song and dance

So here's the latest. I met with the oncology surgeon yesterday. (This is the same guy that i met when I was in the hospital for 4 days. He's the guy who said 18 months to 2 years! By the way, he doesn't remember me...) Anyway, he gave me the results of the PET/CT I had a few weeks back.

For those you do not understand what the difference is between a PET scan and a CT scan, I'll give a brief description. A CT scan show anatomy. I sees a mass or bone, or organ; you know, your innards! I can show you the exact location of the tumors. What is cannot do is show you the the tumor is doing. That's where PET comes in. Its job is to show function. (It works on other stuff besides tumors, by the way.) In my case, I was injected with radioactive glucose (sugar). This isotope is like Brawndo, it's got what tumors crave! The sugar is absorbed by a healthy tumor (it eats it) This makes the tumors glow in the scan. That's where the good news comes in: my tumors didn't glow!!! That doesn't mean they're dead (they could be), but it does mean they aren't eating. So they are either in the process of dying, dormant... I'll take either if those!

There are several small tumors on my liver. Most of them are on the right lobe. The docs say they are going to take all of my right lobe and my gallbladder. That kind of stinks to lose the gallbladder as collateral damage, but that's the way it goes...

That's not the bad news, though. The really bad news the on the left lobe. I have a couple of small tumors on that side as well. two of them are not an issue, the other one is extremely close to the main vein that drains your liver. If that gets cut, or plugged up, you die. Period. So that means they cannot cut it with a scalpel, use a laser, or radiation. All of those have inherit risks that are too great to take a chance. It's not all bad though. Lemmen-Holton happens to be one of only 12 places in America (so the doc says) that has this electric probe that they insert into the tumor and electrocute it to death. Sounds like fun, right?

So here is the order of events...

9/11/2014 - liver recection
4 to 7 days in the hospital. After that, I'll be off work for about a month.
?/?/2014 (i hope) colon surgery. more time off work, or at least a weight restriction.
After that the electric shock therapy. 
After that, more chemo. At least six months worth. (oh joy)

So chemo worked well. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. Now the surgeons get to show their stuff.

Oh, one more thing: They are having me see a geneticist. They want to see if I have a gene or DNA mutation that caused this. This is important more for my kids than me. If this is something they can get, we want to catch it super early!

Thanks again for all the prayers, kind words, help at home, support and love. I am deeply moved by all the generosity that has surrounded us. Along those lines, the Edge Ice Arena insisted that we sign up Calvin for their in-house hockey league. (whether we can afford it or not, they said not to worry about the money)   So make sure you go out and skate on a Saturday open skate day, or have a skate party!

Just some observations...

There are many things in life that people argue over. Democrat vs republican, Sunni vs Shiite, coke vs Pepsi, Mary Ann vs ginger the list goes on and on. On the other there are some things everybody knows: Strawberry jelly is better than grape, a medium rare steak is the best way to cook it, the Scorpions were the best metal band of the 80's, the 1949 chevy fleetmaster deluxe is the coolest car ever, and if you get 50% of your liver removed, it will grow back after a week or two.

Ok, some of those facts might be my personal opinions, bit the liver thing is real! It amazes A d and delights me that this is so. I'm going to have the right love on my live basically removed... That's a little scary, as you might imagine, but I take a lot of comfort that is come back on its own with no drugs and weird procedures. It's like are own salamander tail.  

I've tried to keep my reading about cancer to a minimum. There are a voile reasons for this. First and foremost is because most of the information is not good. A great deal of the info says I have five or so tears. I choose to say "no" to that. I'm on the far right side of the bell curve so far, and I choose to stay there. Another reason is that I want to listen to my doctors, if I start playing doc myself, I may stop listening to what they say. As Steve Martin said on Saturday Night Live, "who's the barber here?" (If you don't know that reference comes from, get on the googles and look it up. It's quite humorous!)


I've learned many this this year. Some have been beneficial other I wish I didn't know. Either way, it's been quite an adventure. I an on pulling through this, buck all the odds. Will I succeed? Beats me, but as I've said probably a hundred times this year: "I can't quantify how much a positive attitude has on my success, but I know if I think I'm going to die, I'll be right!"

The end is nigh!!! Actually it's just time for surgery

Had my appointment with the oncologist today, and I got the lowdown on what coming next. First if all my cancer markers from my last blood test were amazing. One is down to 47 (from 2050) and the other is a 3.1 (which is considered to be "normal")! Very happy with that news....

Next, I found out what kind of surgery they plan to do. They plan to remover the whole right side of my liver! He said my left love was  larger than average so it shouldn't be a big issue with recovery. He said there are no long term affects.

It will be a second surgery to remove part of my colon. That will be 4 to 6 weeks later. NO COLOSTOMY BAG. (Yay!)

I still don't have a date for surgery. I have another appointment; this time with the oncology surgeon. That will determine the date, but it wil be within the next week or two. We will just have to wait until there's a spot in the schedule.

This is about as good of news as we could have prayed for!  God is good.