Back to reality

Carly, Andrew and Mom tobaganing, originally uploaded by DPC Tutt.

You know you've had a good holiday when your first day back to work is a shocker. You know, you lost your bus pass, forgot your login password and have a million emails to read. Although I'm not working now, I've had more than a month of continuous time without a trip to the hospital for cancer treatment of some kind. In that time we've been to Hawaii and celebrated Christmas and New Year. It's been great to have cancer out of sight and out of mind for that time. It's been a true holiday from reality, but now I have a few emails from my buddy cancer that need attention.

Today I had my consult with the liver surgeon Dr Sutherland. It was a sobering meeting for Penny and I as we discussed the procedure, timing and likely outcomes. The plan is to do a 60% liver resection (remove 60% of the liver that contains the metastases) about 2-3 months following my colon surgery. Amazingly the remaining 40% of the liver that is left will grow in about 6 weeks to be the size of the original liver. How cool is that! It turns out that the liver is a phenomenal organ. I feel a little bad for all the beer its had to deal with over the years.

January will see me at the hospital on a fairly regular basis. On Wednesday I have an MRI to plan the colon surgery. I also have a CT scan planned for later in the month that we will try to move up so surgery can proceed ASAP. I will also have consultations with my radiation and chemotherapy doctors this month. I'm expecting colon surgery in February but if we can politely force things to move a little faster it could happen in January. I'll be sure to post updates here as I learn more.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I know I did.