Steve's Care Page

Today I had an endoscopy. The surgeon wanted to look around to see what percentage of my stomach needed to be removed. The preliminary results is that it looks like my cancer is limited to the top of my stomach. We won't know the true extent until the biopsy because looks can be deceiving. If this is true the surgery would possibly be done via a laparoscopic procedure (minimally invasive). This would reduce the chance of infection and make recovery easier. I also had my appointment for tomorrow's chemo. The good news is my Neutrophils number went up from 1.35 to a 4.86. While not as high as pre-chemo (7.6) it is in the range above 2. It means that we can continue on the path and I'm not as compromised as I was at the end of the last round. As for red blood cell counts, they are down from last time. The main number, my hemoglobin is down from 8.6 to 7.4. Before the chemo my number as still below baseline at 13.4 where anything less than 13.5 would be considered low and a...

We went to see a surgeon today. Lots of information First, I will need to get a EKG and blood-work on Monday. This is so that they can do an additional endoscopy Thursday so that they can look around and do more biopsies. The purpose is to see what percentage of my stomach has cancer. They want to do this sooner rather than later to know where the cancer was before the full rounds of chemotherapy. We also talked about what types of surgery would be needed. There are two extremes. Best case: If the cancer is a small percentage of my stomach, they could do a minimal invasive surgery (laparoscopic) to remove the sections that had cancer. Worst case: If it is most of the stomach, they might need to do open surgery, they then need to do some re-construction so that there is a Y joint. The left portion takes in bile and the right portion would take in food. This would require an additional surgeon. We would do all of these 8-10 weeks after the completion of chemo and radiation ...

For me, chemo is basically agreeing to take toxic medicines that nearly kill you every two weeks.  It is scary to volunteer to know that for 2-4 days after taking the medicine your body is basically recovering. Last Saturday, I sat on the couch all day and did not even feel like paying attention to TV.  Slowly day by day you improve. Your not 100% by the next round but you can start doing things. Doing these things for yourself is an important process of control and long term sanity.  Doing things like the dishes and getting the kids ready for school are important tasks. At least for me, another important task is having work to concentrate on.  It feels good to be productive and help others, to use one's built training and expertise. It not just makes the time pass faster, it brings a bit of normalcy into ones life. Also, it is time that you are not thinking about cancer, time that you can get lost in work. This sets up an issue. You go from not wanting to be ...