A Mixed Bag

Last Monday, Pat and I traveled down to Stanford to get the results from Dr. Fisher. In a nutshell, the cancer is growing as we suspected. The good news is that the only place that they could see cancer growth was in my spleen. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t any other cancer growth, since the CT scan only picks up spots that are greater than 6 mm in size.

When Dr. Fisher told us this news, I was jumping with joy. In fact, I ran over and hugged him. He was very perplexed with my reaction. I guess most people aren’t thrilled when they hear that cancer is growing in their body. When he asked me why I was so happy, I told him that I had prepared my self for a much worse discussion. Heck – a spleen can be taken out and I already knew I had cancer in my spleen!

George then brought in the surgeon to walk through their joint recommendation. They want to take it out. They were ok with leaving my spleen in when the cancer wasn’t growing but now that it is growing, they want it out. George said that he wasn’t surprised that my numbers went up and that the cancer was growing, he was just hoping that it wouldn’t have happened so soon.

I am scheduled to have a splenectomy on March 30 at Stanford. There are 3 possible outcomes on that day (there are probably a lot more, but these are the ones that I’m aware of):

1. The Preferred Result – the surgeon takes a laparoscopic look around, doesn’t see any more cancer, doesn’t see a lot of scar tissue and removes the spleen laparoscopically. I leave the hospital in 1 day and after healing, return to my current chemo regimen of Avastin and Xeloda.

2. Next Best Result – the surgeon takes a laparoscopic look around, doesn’t see any more cancer but sees too much scar tissue to remove the spleen laparoscopically so he is forced to open me up and take out the spleen. I will then have a 3 – 4 day hospital stay. After healing, I’d return to my current chemo regimen of Avastin and Xeloda.

3. Least Preferred Result – the surgeon takes a laparoscopic look around and sees a significant amount of cancer that he can’t remove. He would then leave my spleen in my body and sew me back up. After healing, I would then go on a very aggressive chemo regimen to try to shrink the tumors.

So – it looks like I’ll be losing yet another expendable organ. I will have to get immunizations for meningitis, pneumonia and the flu, since apparently, the spleen is important to protect the body against these ailments. But, otherwise, I’ve been told that I should see very little impact on my life. Many, many people live without a spleen.

Over the next 3 weeks, I will be focusing on prepping myself for surgery. Although I am not thrilled that I’ll be heading into my 6^th stomach surgery in just over 4 years, I am relieved that we have a plan of action to get rid of my cancer.

But now it’s time to take my chemo and get to bed….