Post by picksthemusic on Feb 10, 2016 15:46:49 GMT -5
This is the email I sent to my family (I'll omit some of the less important/personal details), and sorry it's long:
We saw the surgeon today, and have some mixed news. Based on what he sees on the scan that told us DH has a tumor on his liver, he’s not completely convinced that it’s cancer (yay!). There are definitely things there that point to it possibly being cancer, but based on how the spot responded to the contrast dye, it didn’t act like a cancerous tumor would normally behave. These kinds of tumors are pretty much all the surgeon deals with, so I believe him when he says he’s not convinced, otherwise he wouldn’t have said it. It gives me hope, of course, so I’m cautiously optimistic.
Now comes the surgery. Thing is, the tumor is in the back of the liver next to his ribcage, which makes it really hard to get to surgically. We are opting for a robotic approach, which is as minimally invasive as we can get for where the tumor is located, while also having the small risk that they may need to open him up fully in case of a bleed or something that they can’t control with the robot alone. The risk is minimal, but possible considering the tumor is close to a very vascular area of the liver. So he’ll either come out with little scars, or some little scars along with a big one. The other option for surgery would be a radiofrequency ablation where they would burn the tumor, but we’re nixing that based on the fact that this would only allow a minimal amount of the tumor to be biopsied, and we wouldn’t get healthy tissue along with it to biopsy.
As far as the timing of the surgery goes, it will be after March 3rd or so.
All that being said, once he has the surgery and we know what the tumor is (whether benign or malignant), we’ll know how to proceed for further management/monitoring, or be cleared of the diagnosis of ‘cancer’ and can go back to a relatively normal existence.
*PDQ*
Thanks everyone for everything - it means the world.
Post by madDawg228 on Feb 10, 2016 17:11:50 GMT -5
As someone w/o a medical background, you explained everything so perfectly. It sounds like you guys have a solid plan. Keeping your family in my t&p's.