Welcome to my CaringBridge website. I'm using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. I appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.
Here's what happened: On February 10 I went to the Kaiser Oakland emergency room because of 4 days of worsening abdominal pain. I ended up in emergency surgery because of intussusception. The surgeon took out 25% of my colon, my appendix, over 50 lymph nodes, and a 5 cm mass. They left me with a huge midline (pubis to just above the belly button). I looked like one of my patients.
I stayed in the hospital for 8 days. (I love epidurals. Best pain management ever.) By the end of my hospital stay I learned there was cancer in the mass and four of my lymph nodes.
Good news: all the cancer the CT scans can find is out of my body. So I'm basically cancer free Bad news: the oncologist (who is awesome - nice, evidence based, up on and involved in recent research) wants me on chemo for six months. This will raise my chances of not getting cancer again from 55% to about 80%. I guess that's kinda good news.
March 13: the ominous date of my first chemo. Bleh.
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