Dr. Kovitz, my medical oncologist, called me today. Apparently he spoke with my surgeon and they decided I can go ahead with my infusion on Thursday. The surgeon was following her regular protocol which is to stop all chemotherapy infusions before surgery. But Dr. Kovitz reminded her this is not chemotherapy (even though we call it chemo and it’s infused in the chemo infusion center). It’s immunotherapy. Dr. Kovitz said we really don’t know how long we would have to wait for it to get out of my system anyway. So…we are back on schedule for treatment this week.
Oh, did I forget to tell you I’m scheduled for surgery? 🙄
It’s been a busy week. We helped move our daughter’s family out of their apartment into a storage unit until their next place is ready. They can move in tomorrow. She has been staying with us (and her two kids) in the meantime. The kids are feeling the transition. They are five and three, and they are good at it. 😂 Did I say they can move in tomorrow? 😂🤪😂 She also starts a new job tomorrow. But that’s a whole other story for a different blog.
Surgery, oh yeah.
My colorectal surgeon, Dr. You (not to be mistaken for Dr. Who), called me after the failed polyp procedure. She said we have two options. Since the biopsies did not show cancer (they are precancerous adenomas which may or may not turn into cancer), we can “wait and see.” In other words, go in every year or so and take more biopsies to see if progresses to something more. If it does, we will do surgery then.
OR …
If I “can’t sleep at night” because I’m concerned about it, or I just want to be certain, we can go ahead and do the surgery. Remove part of my colon, appendix, and of course the polyp.
I weighed the options. Hmmm. I don’t like the idea of waiting and watching something grow. We did that with my breast cancer the first time, and look where it got me.
And then Dr. You gave me the blueberry pancake analogy, a/k/a her “caveat.” That sealed the deal for me. After talking with hubby and friends, we all agreed.
What is the blueberry pancake analogy? I’m glad you asked.
Basically, when they do biopsies it’s like pulling pieces from a blueberry pancake. If they find blueberries, we know they exist. However, there is no guarantee there are no blueberries just because they didn’t find any in the biopsy. Her caveat is that. Unless we remove the whole pancake, we don’t know if we missed any blueberries. But don’t worry, she added. There are several stages before it hits the cancer stage. 😳😳
I like blueberries, but not when they are compared to cancerous growths. I didn’t like the idea of the slightest possibility that something could still be lurking underneath this giant thing. The only way to know for sure is to remove the whole pancake, er, I mean, polyp.
Besides, my insurance is changing to Medicare in July and we still don’t know what all that means. All my out of pocket expenses are currently met for the year with my current insurance, so we can let Cigna pay for it.
All that to say…we decided to go ahead and do the surgery. It’s scheduled for Tuesday June 7th at the downtown MD Anderson Cancer Center. I have pre-op in The Woodlands on Friday May 27th, a Covid test and labs on Sunday June 5th, bowel prep (of course), and then I’ll be in the hospital from June 7th until after surgery for 3-5 days (depending on how quickly I poop💩). It looks like recovery is about 6 weeks but she said I should be feeling pretty good after 2-4 weeks.
This surgery is called by the following name. Here’s a WebMD link if you are super curious. SURGICAL LAPAROSCOPY WITH PARTIAL COLECTOMY, REMOVAL OF TERMINAL ILEUM, AND ILEOCOLOSTOMY. Looks like walking is a good thing, so I plan to do some of that after I get out. I’m sure I’ll know more after the pre-op visit, but that’s the gist of it.
À la prochaine … until next time!