First of all, a very happy 75th Birthday to my Mom! We had a great celebration at Becca and Steven’s house with yummy healthy food for dinner followed by some yummy unhealthy cupcakes!
There are a few others celebrating today too – Happy Birthday Eliza and Susu!!
Alas, as usual I am writing at the end of the day when I am half asleep. I wanted to get an update out as I know many of you are waiting on the results of my other scans and my meeting with surgeon Dr. Curley. The scans (MRI and CT) looked good. No new areas of growth and the 4 tumors in my liver have shrunk more since June. I learned today that I have 2 tumors on the left lobe of my liver and two on my right. Evie Stevie. I thought I had more tumors than that so imagine my delight at there only being 4! This by the way is not new information, just information that I somehow failed to remember. The lymph nodes appeared to be normal in size.
For all of you doing the she’s cured jig after that PET scan last week, hold your stompers. Dr. Curely was unfazed by the PET and said he expected it to look like it did because chemo is still suppressing the metabolic activity. hmmm. I thought the last 6 weeks off of treatment was enough time to get a good read on the PET. Apparently it’s not. This is not to say those PET results were meaningless. It’s more to say that a surgeon probably doesn’t rely on scans that can’t measure things on a microscopic level when he can get far better information after he carves it out of you and gets it looked at by a pathologist. So, that’s what we’re going to do. Surgery has been set for next week. Thursday, September 25 we’re going for total removal of cancer. I will be bidding farewell to my gallbladder (no future gallstones for this chick), the entire left lobe of my liver (in previous posts I wrote the right side. This is wrong, you shouldn’t believe everything you read), the 2 tumors on the right side of the liver will be treated to microwave ablation (ie burning it out) and all the lymph nodes in my abdomen that have shown cancer will take a hike, about 20-30 of them.
Surgery will be done at St. Luke’s hospital in Houston and I will be there for about 5-6 days. Recovery is about 6 weeks. That’s how long it takes my liver to regenerate, crazy right? I can’t drive for 3 weeks and I can’t lift, push or pull anything more than 10 pounds so I don’t disturb the sutures. I am not the best patient in the sense that I don’t like people waiting on me – this is where my sister and I differ greatly. The lifting and no driving thing will be tough for me. As I recover, walking will be good for me as will frequent naps. The whole regenerating your liver thing apparently zaps your energy, go figure!
How do I feel about all this? I feel good. I wanted to get to surgery despite being told it would never be an option and here we are. I am savoring this goal knowing it’s been hard won by me and by all of you. Do I wish that PET meant I was cancer-free? Yup, I do. Yet I did know that’s not what it meant. It did mean that I am doing really well and we are on the right track to being cancer-free. I told Becca back in February or March that I was going to be cancer-free by Christmas. She looked at me like, well..let’s not get ahead of yourself, but it’s a good goal. I stand by my plan and I’m that much closer to it.
I had a beautiful cheer for my trip yesterday to Houston organized by my college friend Heather and participation from many of you. Ham – thank you for that beautiful book full of quotes you organized. I loved every word of it and every beautiful page. I showed it to Becca tonight and she smiled and said how creative it was and how fun it is to watch each cheer leader make each and every cheer so special with their own touches. It’s true. It’s like a gift, inside a gift inside a gift. Each effort is so deeply appreciated by me. Thank you to all of you that made this one so wonderful.
It’s time for me to go to bed. Sweet dreams.
xoxo Hilary