It’s official. I am *NOT* fat! I have cancer. And wouldn’t you know…the common name is “Jelly Belly!” Ironically, while my midsection was expanding, I was slowly dying of starvation.
So, how did I find out about this? It was a dark and stormy night… No, that’s Snoopy’s opener. It was a balmy Florida afternoon that Friday, July 28. I went to see my doctor because I thought that I had a hernia and would need to have another surgery. While she was examining me, she said, “Hmm. That’s odd…” Words that you never want to hear your doctor say during an exam, right? So, she sent me for labs on Monday, July 30 and a CT scan on Tuesday, August 1. After I completed the CT scan, I had just hoisted myself back into the truck when the radiologist called and told me to go directly across the street to the Indian River Medical Center (IRMC) to the ER, and from there I was admitted and told that I had the big C. But, I don’t do anything half-way. Naturally, I had to have a rare cancer. Pseudomyxoma peritonei to be specific.
That began the search for one of the few surgical oncologists in the nation who have actually performed the surgery that would save my life. After receiving several rejections (I was too advanced, too complex) Dr. Edward Levine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical agreed to do the surgery on Thursday, September 14. He’s estimating it to be 19 hours at least, so prayers for him to be wide-awake would be awesome. :-)
If you want to learn more about this, here are some great resources:
(simple version)
http://www.macmillan.org.uk/information-and-support/pseudomyxoma-peritonei-pmp#283234 (more medical)
https://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/diseases/7488/pseudomyxoma-peritonei (all around good source of information):
https://acpmp.org/clone-about-acpmp 
