Surgery Cancer Results

I got some good news yesterday.  We had two medical appointments which made it the busiest day of my life since I got out of the hospital nearly two weeks ago.  In the morning, we saw Dr. Goodwin, my chemo oncologist.  She let us know that the pathology reports from the surgery showed no cancer remaining in the parts that were removed from me.  That's good news as it puts my survival rate at 85 to 88%. 

When I was in the hospital, my surgeon visited me daily (including weekends) and I was asking him about this pathology report.  I asked if the report came back all clear, would my chemo plan change to something much lighter?  He explained that because I was young and healthy, I would get hammered as hard as they could to kill any potential stray cancer cells without killing me.  Oh yay.

To bump up my success rate even more, I will be going on the chemo bottle for a couple of days in a row in two week rotations.   It will be Folfax and it's much more potent than the pills I was taking in January and February (Xeloda).  I will have a PICC line inserted into my bicep again to feed the chemicals to my heart (it stops about 1 cm shy of the heart) for distribution.  As noted before, the PICC line is necessary since these chemicals destroy veins.  They get dumped adjacent the heart from the PICC line where they are diluted in a lot of blood and the heart immediately distributes the Folfax throughout my body. 

All this is done to increase my survival rate by another 2 to 3%.

The drawback is the side effects.  Many side effects are temporary but some are permanent.  I see death listed.  I'm going to ask if that's a temporary side effect.

Death by Popcorn.  I'm on a low residue diet which means no fresh fruit, no whole wheat and no fibre. 

The night before my appointments, a friend came over and he brought some snacks.  I didn't realize popcorn

was full of fibre.  I probably ate 1/4 of the bag.  Well, a few hours later, I stayed awake in bed as my bowels did

painful sommersaults.  It was agonizing and I only slept about three hours all night.  For my morning appointment, I asked for a hospital bed and I writhed in pain during half the debrief from the chemo doctor as my bowels passed the last of the popcorn.  Ugghhh...

The good news is a lot of these side effects appear in the 5 to 6 month treatment time period so they're going to stop me at 4 months.  I like the shorter 4 month time period even if it will make be bedridden in two week rotations instead of 3 week rotations.  I'll take 4 months and the possibility of minimal side effects any day. 

Another side effect I'm worried about is losing feeling in my hands and feet.  This temporary side effect can also be permanent and I know one person who has suffered this.  My surgeon yesterday afternoon also relayed the info about one of his patients a couple of years ago who also suffered from this and it shattered him.  He was a National Arts Centre pianist.  I'm sensitive to this as I still don't have restored feeling in my left fingers.  They're only about 90% restored from the surgery and it feels really weird.  My surgeon says the feeling will come back but it may take another month.

In the afternoon we had a followup with my surgeon, Dr. Weaver.  I had to lie on a couch outside the elevators while Erinn waited half an hour in the waiting room for our appointment.  It's tough when I can't sit anywhere and standing is not very relaxing.  Plus, I was feeling faint and weak all day yesterday due to a flirtation with popcorn torture.

My surgeon is happy with my healing and tells me the JP Drain can come out next week.  Great!!!!  I get the sutures out of my backside next week by the home care nurses and the drain will follow.  It'll be a great week next week.  Another week or so after that, I'll start my chemo treatments.  May the games begin!!!