Steve's Care Page

Went to the oncologist today. He confirmed that I have T3 N2. This means that the cancer is stage 3 and that it is in contact with 2-6 lymph nodes. The human body has 500-700 lymph nodes.  I was also told that the cancer while penetrating the outer stomach wall, it won't weaken the structural integrity of the stomach to the point of a perforation. He stated that it is curable. I did not ask for average survival rates as I don't really know what that means and focusing on the things I can change is the most important task, not worrying about stuff that I cant. right now my weight was 194.5 which seems to be up from a low of about 192. My pulse was 53 which is lower than the last week where it was in the high 70's some of this could be an error and some could be that I'm recovering from lack of eating. So, the current plan is to have a port placed in my chest within a week. This is an outpatient procedure. It is a device that is under the skin that allows doctors easy a...

The current designation of my cancer is that it is stage 3 cancer affecting 2-4 lymph nodes.  If you look here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stomach_cancer#Staging you can see an image that shows the levels of staging.  In the current diagnosis, we would need chemotherapy before surgery because if you just removed it at this point the cancer cells would spread though the lymph nodes. From a symptom point of view, my chest hurts due to the pressure of the tumor on my chest. In the morning with 600ml of Advil the pain is well managed. I do seem to have more energy now that I'm eating more. My goal is to gain some weight as I know that in the process of healing I'm going to loose some weight. I'm off to the oncologist this morning to see what he thinks and detail out some of the details of the next steps.

Everyone,   On October 24th I had an endoscopy exam. My GI doctor told me that I have cancer. He provided pictures of blackened stomach lining and some black lining into my esophagus. This was followed up by a CT scan and an ultrasound endoscopic exam on October 26th.  On Monday the 29th, I received the write-up of the biopsy. The biopsy told me that I am positive for invasive adenocarcinoma. It is moderately differentiated without signet ring differentiation. It also tests negative for intestinal metaplesia. This is a slow growing cancer. It is mostly undetectable until it gets big enough to prevent swallowing.