Hello to all my friends here at the colon club - I love you all!
Bob had surgery Friday 7-6-06, good news!! The surgeon said he got all the disease. Surgery was successful.
He said that the the largest tumor had been shrunk a lot with the chemo and there was scar tissue. It was just under the diaphram so he did the RFA on that tumor. The other "shadows" seen on the CT Scan must have been "artifact" because there was no tumor there. He did however find a small tumor, the size of a thumbnail on the edge of the liver so he was able to resect it. He check everything he could and did not find any disease.
To back up a bit, I did have all his records sent for a 2nd opinion. Not many places will do that and not see the patient. But we live up here in Maine and surgery was scheduled fairly soon and we did not want to wait too long. Anyway, a physician from the University of Pittsburg, which is well known for their advances in liver resections, read over Bob's records and agreed with the plan our surgeon was going to do. I found this out about 5 days prior to his surgery. Not that I did not trust his surgeon, I just wanted to cover all bases.
On the morning of surgery we arrived at 545 am, Bob was taken for prep by 6:15 am. I went into the waiting room and started my wait. I grabbed a few magazines. You know, I really was not paying much attention to anything, but the first one I opened was the May 2006 reader's digest. I opened it up to a story of a man, with cancer, that basically invented the RFA and the work the University of Pittsburg is doing with it!! I read the article twice! When my father in law arrived to sit with me I couldn't wait to show him. I knew it was a sign.
I want to thank all of you for all the support you have given me through out this ordeal. I know that the fight is not over, but the future is certainly more promising.
I think back to when I first joined the Colon Club in Dec 05, the 2nd opinion we got that at Stage IV, we needed to get things in order. But Bob decided to fight. There were a few set backs in the beginning before he could start chemo and the awful side effects from the chemo.
I don't know yet what the oncologist is going to recommend. I think frequent scans, etc and maybe some chemo for a while to make sure any stray cancer cells are taken care of.
I am interested in what others had done after surgery. Let me know.
Again, thank you all for your love, support, prayers and being there for me and Bob.
Love Dot