October 18: I’m happy to report that Mom’s chemotherapy and radiation treatments ended last Wednesday (the 12th), and she’s now done for at least the next three weeks. Her body will get a good hiatus to rest and recuperate, and hopefully she’ll be feeling better and better. The chest pain problems she was having have begun to subside. It sounded pretty painful, but the doctors ran all sorts of scans and couldn’t find anything wrong with her. So we’re guessing that the pain could be related to the fact that her chemo port is in her upper chest and maybe having continuous infusion of nasty drugs for six weeks irritated blood vessels in her upper chest.
As of Monday, Mom said that she is still experiencing some nausea and malaise, and she is sticking pretty close to home.
The next step (after three more weeks of recovery) is to get a CAT Scan on November 8. Check out this site for a fun explanation of how CAT scans work. On the 8th, they’ll be looking to see how much the tumor has changed. Our fervent hope is that the treatments that were so hard on Mom’s systems were also really hard on the tumor and it has shrunk to the point that it is removable with surgery. As a reminder, the primary reason that the tumor could not be removed in June was because it involves about three centimeters of the superior mesenteric vein. Here’s a site that talks about the Whipple Procedure, the surgery Mom will have if the tumor has shrunk enough that it is not surrounding her superior mesenteric vein. Here’s a 9-page PDF for those who really want to learn more about the surgery. The superior mesenteric vein drains blood from the small intestine, and because it is such a vital and delicate vein, it is very difficult to operate on. Hence, we really want the tumor to BACK AWAY from the vein.
So that’s the current update. Should be quiet for a while!
~Althea
Althea, Bryan, Andrew, and Sylvia