My Future

We left home at 5:30 this morning to head to Charlottesville to see the surgeon, Dr. Adams. We were so nervous waiting in his office...wondering what the news was going to be, wondering what my future held, wondering what the MRI results were going to show.

In a matter of minutes, all of those questions were answered. The MRI showed that the tumor shrunk "a little bit...a couple of millimeters." He did not seem disappointed with these results because he said that it could have grown. It could have been an aggressive tumor that did not respond to the chemo or radiation. Shrinking, even if it was a little bit, was still shrinking. One major thing that we didn't know, or at least it was never explained to us as it was today, is that the tumor is "wrapped around the blood vessel." Beside the blood vessel is an artery. If the tumor was around the artery, there would be NO OPTIONS. Because it's the blood vessel, the option is to do a dissection and actually cut that part of the blood vessel out and replace it with another blood vessel from my neck or leg. The best part of all of the news Dr. Adams gave us is that he is moving ahead with surgery. In fact, I will have the surgery next Wednesday, August 1st! He may have a vascular surgeon part of the team next week in case he does the blood vessel dissection. If he doesn't do the dissection, that meant that he could pull the tumor off the vessel.

The surgery will take about 6 hours. May be longer because of the vessel. He will put 2 drains in that will be in place in case there is leakage. Dr. Adams said that the pancreas is like tissue paper and to put stitches in tissue paper is hard. He said that he will take out the head of the pancreas, the gall bladder, the small intestine, bile ducts and perhaps some of the stomach if it's been affected from radiation. It sounds like a lot of the surgery will be determined once he goes in and sees what is what. He will start the surgery with small incisions so that he can look in with a scope. He said that there is always the chance that surgery can't continue if more organs are involved...i.e. the liver. If all looks good, he will make a vertical incision from my breast bone to belly button. I should be in the hospital about a week. Sometimes the stomach doesn't "wake up" and start responding to food. If that happens, I may need a feeding tube, which would keep me in the hospital a few days longer. I can go home with both the drains and feeding tube if needed.

After meeting with Dr. Adams this morning, I was sent over to the hospital for all of my pre-op procedures. I had a chest x-ray, EKG, blood work and met with the anesthetist nurse. Other than getting my toothbrush packed, I am all ready for surgery next Wednesday!

Today's news was good. I could have been told that surgery wasn't an option... but that's NOT the case! I could have been told that the artery was involved...but that's not the case! It's not great news that the tumor is wrapped around the blood vessel but thank God that there's a solution.

I asked Dr. Adams why the 5 year survival rate is so low (it's like 20%) even after this surgery. He said it's because pancreatic cancer is just not a good cancer to have. He said that, while there are good drugs for other cancers, there isn't anything really good that they have for pancreatic cancer. Because of that, recurrence is high because bad cancer cells are left. I'm hoping that having more chemo after surgery will help reduce any chance of recurrence.

There are many things that I can't control about this disease. I am going to take comfort in the fact that I can have surgery and give this disease a run for it's money. I am going to live each day in the moment and make the most of  each day of my life. I am going to control only the things that I can control and leave the rest in God's hands.

It is now time to put all of this out of my mind. It's time to enjoy my family that will be arriving in the next few days. It's time to enjoy all of the friends that I will soon be seeing. It's time to enjoy each moment as we watch our youngest son becomes a husband and we gain a beautiful daughter-in-law.