May 19, 2009
Surgery
As many of you already know, Portland Firefly is scheduled for major surgery. I am excited to have this surgery. What? Excited? How can that be? You know I’m about to tell you!!!
I have Primary Peritoneal Carcinoma. It is very deadly, very aggressive and very difficult. My cancer consists of many (maybe hundreds sometimes thousands) ( we’ll know more after surgery) tumors that have attached themselves to the peritoneum, which is the inside lining of the abdomen. If you have read as far back as March 12th, then you also may remember that one of my first symptoms (besides feeling like I had the flu) was Ascites. Ascites is an accumulation of fluid inside the abdominal cavity. I had probably 5 liters inside me, only 2 of which were able to be drained. This fluid showed a presence of cancer cells in it. In other words, cancerous fluid has been sloshing around in my abdomen for about three months now. Now matter how one looks at it, that can’t be a good thing. There is also the very real possibility that there are cancerous tumors growing on any or all of my major organs as the fluid and cancerous Peritoneum touch all of them.
During surgery, my Doctor will be looking at and examining all of my organs. She will be removing as much of the fluid that she can. She will also be removing all tumors that she can remove. The biggest problem as I see it now, is that the tumors can be as small as a grain of sand; and there can be lots of them. In other words, impossible to remove all of them.
All cancers get “staged”. Mine has not been staged yet. After my doctor gets inside of me and looks around, she will have the information that she needs to stage my cancer. It will be an automatic Stage III with the possibility of a Stage IV (if the cancer is in any of my organs). Then within each stage there is something called a Grade — Grade 1, 2, 3 ie. II2, III2, IV3.
All cancer patients get a prognosis which is their life expectancy or their expected remission or cure rate. I have not been given a prognosis yet and will get one after my surgery. These are the reasons why I am excited about my surgery.
Good News or Bad News, after surgery I will have the Right News.
By the way, today it is exactly only 2 months since I received the news that I have cancer. I have had this cancer for only one month longer –three months total and my whole world has been changed for good, maybe not for the better, but changed for ever, never to be the same again.
My surgery is tomorrow morning. When praying, please remember to pray for wisdon and guidance for my Doctor and calmness and peace for my children. Please read my post about the DaVinci Robot to learn more about the incredible high tech machine that my Doctor will be using to perform the surgery. Portland Firefly thanks you so very much. I will try to have my Daughter post an update for you tomorrow or the next day after surgery.
