Mom is now NED but it was a tough fight to get there!

[njf]

I have posted a few times on my moms fight so far. On December 5th she had her second liver resection to clear the remaining tumors from her right lobe. Chemo had shrunk or eliminated almost all that had been visible. When she started so had so many that Dr. Kingham and given up at 11 before her first surgery and she had nearly as many after. By the time she had her second she was down to 6 and 4 of them was superficial! He ended up only removing 2 and he ablated 1 and another had disappeared completely and was only scar tissue. She had her colostomy reversed as well.

On December 7th she developed symptoms of sepsis, a ct was done and it was decided based on her declining condition to do surgery to rule out all possible causes. CT had revealed to fluid pockets around her liver. The surgery was done and afterwards she had two drains put in to drain the fluid pockets around the liver which appeared to be the cause of infection as her colon was intact still.

On December 13th after several days of feeling mixed through the day, going from feeling well to feeling weak she fell into septic shock rapidly following a PT session and was rushed to ICU. On the 14th she had ANOTHER surgery and it was discovered that during the 2nd surgery her colon was somehow compromised and a hole was put in it. Fluid had been leaking VERY slowly over the course of the previous 6 days. She ended up with a total of 4 abscess drains. They had to give her an ileostomy during this surgery. She remained critical for 2 days but quickly recovered and was out of the ICU in just 5! She got to leave the hospital on Dec 31st with 2 abscess drains (one biliary, and one draining what leaked from the colon and caused infection).

She is now down to 1 of those abscess drains (biliary) and can't wait to have it removed as she can't restart chemo until it is. However during her hospital stay obviously MANY scans had been performed and all showed no tumors or growth. On January 14th she had another CT scan that was also clean and her CEA was done and was 3.4 and the results from her surgery showed that the largest tumor was 100% dead and the other was over 80% dead! On Jan 28th she had labs done locally and her CEA is down to 1.5 now!

So despite a tough fight and still facing some issues (pain and her blood pressure has been pretty high) she is in a good spot and doing very well! Hopefully on Monday the 4th she will get to resume her chemo.

[AmyG]

Holy cow!!

What a rollercoaster ride! Glad she's recovering and hopefully she's finishing up her chemo Monday!

[njf]

She got her biliary drain out and was able to resume chemo on Monday! Her CEA with MSK is 3.1 (its always been a little higher then her local oncs, which is probably down to around 1 now if they was to test it today)!

[stu]

Send her our love . She has had a tough old time .
Stu