I feel like a boomerang.
When we arrived for our appointment we met with Dr. Fisher, an oncologist at Stanford. He said that his first impression would be to leave the tumor where it is and treat it with chemotherapy. His thoughts were that when the first tumor was found it was surgically removed immediately, followed by 6 months of chemotherapy. Then when the lesions on my liver were found they were surgically removed right away and 6 more months of chemo followed that. So, there has actually been nothing to prove that chemo had worked. So, he suggested leaving the tumor in to have something to watch. Then they will know if the chemo is effective. This made sense to me and it also sort of mirrored what we already saw as our path.
Then we went on a break and returned to the room after the board met.
The next doctor to walk into our room was a GI surgeon. He proceeded to tell us that they believe this tumor may not be metastatic in nature but may be original cancer cells from the original event 2 1/2 years ago. He thinks they may have been left behind and stunned everytime we did chemo, but not killed. So, they came to a consensus that there's a better chance for a cure to go in surgically again and remove this node, and other ones around it. Because it seems like the chemo hasn't prevented anything anyway, and maybe if they just go in and take it out it will finally all be removed. There's more of a curative chance this way where with chemotherapy it will start to become more of a maintenance chronic issue. And to top it off, they don't see any reason to do anymore chemotherapy after the surgery. At most they may do some intraoperative radiology while I'm in surgery if they aren't able to get "clean margins". The oncologist did return to the room later and told us that he agrees with this plan.
So, they are thinking that in the next 2 weeks I'll be in the operating room with this GI Surgeon, a Urologist, and an Interventional Radiologist. The urologist will be there to do what's needed for my kidney and the ureter - this may mean relocating the kidney as if it was a transplant. The ureter will have to be "resected" and if the remaining tube isn't long enough to reattach to my bladder then they may have to move my kidney closer to my bladder. Strange, but it makes sense.
I'm told that this is a very complicated, invasive operation and I'll be in the hospital for at least a week. He said it will take many, many weeks to recover, and strongly advised us to postpone our plans for our anniversary party. So, that will be postponed for probably 3 months or so.
Let's hope that they are right and that this is "encapsulated" cancer cells that were left behind and they will be able to remove the last bit of them. While I'm not looking forward to recovering from yet another invasive surgery, I have to say I'm very relieved that it won't be followed by 6 months of chemotherapy.
