Our visit with Curley went great this morning! He showed us the new CT images that show how the tumor is not on my pancreas or gallbladder – they both look fine. Horray!
However, it is completely surrounding two of the three veins that run through the liver, and beginning to compress the third vein. He needs the tumor to shrink away from that third vein before he can do any surgery to remove it (this is exactly what my surgeon and oncologist in Denver said). So, he recommends a specific combination of chemotherapy drugs that can be administered in Denver to try and shrink the tumor. It would be done over 1-2 days, multiple hour IV infusions every two to three weeks for three months. After three months of chemo, we’ll do another CT scan and if it has shrunk by then, we’ll do surgery to remove a good portion of my liver. If it has not shrunk by then, then we’ll do another, maybe two more, cycles of chemo and test again. If two or three cycles of chemo don’t work, then we’ll resort to proton radiation. Proton radiation, though less risky than regular radiation beam, is still potentially dangerous to the healthy liver so it’s used as a second option if chemo just doesn’t seem to be working. He assured me everything but the proton radiation can be given to me in Denver and he told me to talk to my tumor and tell it to shrink (which I’ve already been working on!).
He said I’m in otherwise very good health: young, strong, positive, no other medical problems like with my heart or blood, so he anticipates a good outcome. He was honest with us though: he can’t give us any guarantees or quote us any statistics that hold very much weight. Basically, we need the tumor to shrink 25% in order to do a successful surgery and he’s only seen chemo be successful about 30% of the time. I fully intend to cram myself into that big fat 30% success rate!

We’ve decided to stay the weekend and head back home Monday morning. It was going to cost a small fortune to change our tickets to head home on Saturday or Sunday but not so bad if we stayed until Monday. So we’re treating the rest of this weekend as a bonafide VACATION! Now that my new pain meds are working rather well (I guess it takes a couple of regular doses to take their full effect) we intend to go shopping at the Galleria tomorrow and try to find a Harley shop for Honey to get a shirt. We’ll have some Texas BBQ and see whatever it is we can see in two days in Houston! No doctors, no tests, no medicine talk. Maybe some rests in between events but mostly we’re going to have a romantic vacation here before chemo and whatnot starts.

Dad made me an appointment to see Dr. Kane in Denver again on Tuesday around noon to present her with what Curley’s plan is and get her to administer the treatment. I’ll probably lose my hair in the process of chemo and it won’t be any fun by any means. But I’m ready! Well, almost ready. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have bright shockingly pink hair and, since I’m going to lose it soon anyway, I’m going to get some Manic Panic and color my hair pink when we get home! Haha! What fun!

And I’m making a list of people who are offering to help me out to/through chemo so if you’re in Denver and you want to sign up to take me, help me and otherwise generally entertain me during my chemo treatments, let me know here or drop me an email to that effect! I want to make my treatments as bearable (if not enjoyable) as possible!