Yesterday Dave and I met with the new oncologist to see what he had to say after he met with his tumor board. He said that they agreed that a biopsy was not necessary because of the elevated CEA level. Then he said they also agreed that I should have a stent put in place to open the ureter that's being pressed on by the tumor. We arranged for that to happen this coming Monday. It's an outpatient procedure. I'll be put to sleep during it so I'll be comfortable. Hopefully the stent won't give me any trouble. I'm told it's uncomfortable for some people.
He still likes the plan to leave the nodes in place for now and load me up with every chemotherapy drug possible. Then he would take out the node (surgically, radiologically, or with the Cyberknife, whichever method is appropriate then) either mid-way through chemo or at the end, if anything's left. He expects to see it shrink quickly.
We do still want to speak with the Stanford GI Tumor Board next week. I believe there will be some value in learning what they have to say. Also we can learn if there are any clinical trials that I should consider.
I did ask him how long does he expect me to be able to work in my garden. He said that at this point, statistically speaking, I have a 10-12% chance of this 3rd round of chemo to eradicate everything and cure me. That means most likely it won't cure me. But it could buy me a couple of years at least until new drugs are available and perhaps later on something might be more effective. At the least, he expects that I may have to keep going through this with long breaks in between and I should be able to play in the garden for a few more years. He's hoping that some new advances might turn that into decades. Eventually cancer will be treated like a chronic disease where a person might have to take drugs for the rest of their life but it keeps the cancer from being fatal. I guess we are hoping to buy time until something like that happens. I know that there are researchers all over working on that as fast as they can.
