Dec. 19: We just got some amazing news…Mom is scheduled for surgery with Dr. Farnell at Mayo the week of January 9. They’re going to try to get that tumor out of there!
Mom talked to the doctor who reviewed her endoscopic ultrasound today, and he had two major points to convey: 1) the test didn’t show anything that made them think that surgery was out of the question and 2) although they ran a set of biopsies on the tumor and on lymph nodes and they didn’t find any cancer cells.
This means that she gets to have the Whipple Procedure (the surgery they do to remove the tumor) and there is a 4-5% chance that what she has is not cancer at all. Here’s Mayo’s website discussing the alternative types of tumors it could be. She was diagnosed with mucinous adenocarcinoma. Apparently it is very hard to prove a negative bioposy, and what she has is acting like cancer, but it’s kind of amazing news.
The doctor ended the conversation telling her to have an optimistic Christmas:)
As far as I can tell at this point, the surgery Mom will have in January can be broken down into several steps. At each point, Dr. Farnell has the option of stopping the procedure and sewing her back up if they find conditions that they don’t like. The first thing they are going to do is a laparoscopy. She had one of these on June 9 to see if the tumor had spread, and before they go in to remove the tumor on the pancreas, they are going to do another laparoscopy to make sure it hasn’t spread to other parts of the abdomen. If they see evidence that it has spread, they won’t even start the Whipple Procedure. However, if the laparoscopy doesn’t see any metastatic spread, they’ll do the Whipple. The re-plumbing of Mom’s digestive system. Here’s a good diagram showing “before” and “after” from Mayo’s website.
Here’s some information on the Whipple Procedure
- From USC
- A really detailed 9-page PDF describing the procedure
- http://www.treatments-for-pancreatic-cancer.com/html/surgical-options.php3
- A 16-page scientific document from Gastroentorology
We still have quite a few bridges to cross before we can say we’ve had a successful surgery, but this is so much better than the news we were getting throughout November. What a Christmas gift!
Enjoy the holidays:)
~Althea