The week of Doctors

Things have gone well this week. Yesterday I met with my liver surgeon (Dr Sutherland). We didn't have much to talk about since my surgery and recover from that surgery have gone so well. He spent some of the time making fun of Dr Buie ("my incision looks much cleaner than his" and "How's it going with that drain mess of Dr Buie's?"). He said that he will follow me long term with CEA blood tests and he will alternate between CT scans and ultrasounds every year for the next five or so years. Really, things have gone so well with him that there was very little to discuss.

This morning I met with Dr Buie to discuss the goings on with my butt drain. He said things were going well and he booked me in to see Dr. Reed for a sineogram next Thursday. If the abscess is closing on its own around the drain he will book me in to have a biodegradable glue inserted through the drain to close the abscess and hole into my colon. If the sineogram shows that the abscess is not closing then I will keep the drain for a few more weeks and then reassess the whole situation again at that time with another sineogram. The best case scenario (my layman's view) is that the abscess is closed next week when they do the sineogram. Then the following week they insert the glue, then a few weeks to heal, then start chemo mid August. I would sort of hope for a bit of delay in there somewhere so I can have all of August to enjoy the weather (which is finally nice!).

Stay tuned for more updates next week and a story and some pictures of our new purchase...

Happy sunning y'all.

It's almost chemo time again

Carly's portrait of me, originally uploaded by DPC Tutt.

This is the week of doctors. I see my medical oncologist my liver surgeon and my colorectal surgeon and just for fun I'm also going to see my dentist. It should be a fun week.

Today I was in to see my medical oncologist. We discussed the chemo regimen I will be on and the timing of when it will start. Unfortunately the issue I have with my drain will slow things down a bit since she doesn't want to start the immune compromising chemo while I still have a hole in my colon (I think that would be a great name for a band - Hole in my Colon). So really its up to Don, my colorectal surgeon to fix this drain issue soon so I can start chemo, so I can finish chemo, so I can get on with my life. I'm looking forward to seeing him on Friday and finding out what the plan is.

The chemo regimen I will be on is called FolFox which stands for Folinic acid (leukovorin), Flurouracil (5Fu) and oxaliplatin. It is administered in 2 week cycles for 6 months (12 treatments total). On day one I go in for 3 hours and get hooked up, then I go home with a bottle hooked up to me for 2 days then I have the remaining 12 days of the cycle to recover. I did one round soon after my diagnosis so I sort of know what I'm getting into. Honestly I'm not looking forward to it but it does have proven success in improving survivability so I'm going to give it a chance to do its job.

The side effects of this treatment are numerous, highly variable and generally terrible. They include: Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, neuropathy (both an acute, reversible sensitivity to cold and numbness in the hands and feet and a chronic, possibly irreversible foot/leg, hand/arm numbness), neutropenia (a hematological disorder characterized by an abnormally low number of a type of white blood cell called a neutrophil), ototoxicity (hearing loss), myelosuppression (?), mucositis (the painful inflammation and ulceration of the mucous membranes lining the digestive tract - like mouth sores), dermatitis, and cardiac toxicity (?). Sounds fun. I can't wait to get started (note the sarcasm).

The picture at the top of this entry is a portrait of me by Carly. Note the scars that converge at my belly button, and the bags. Also I'm apparently shaped like a jelly bean.

Butt drains suck

Yesterday I went to see my surgeon Don about my butt drain. I needed some assurance from a medical professional that a) everything was going well and my drain is performing normally and b) there will be a time in my life that I don't have a tube coming out of my butt cheek. So I arranged a time to meet Don in the minor emergency department at the foothills hospital. When we met up I explained all that was going on and told him about my need for some reassurance. I expected him to say all was well but it turns out he was concerned with the on-again off-again flow coming out of the drain (sometimes it would go days or weeks without draining any fluid and then a big pulse of fluid would come out and then nothing again for a few days). He decided to phone down to interventional radiology (the people who put in the drains) and see if they had time to check out the function of my drain and possibly replace it. As luck would have it, they had time to see me in about an hour so I headed down there to wait. Once I got into the room, they called Don to come down and watch for himself what was going on. As usual when they mess around with my drain its very painful so they loaded me up on fentanyl and set to work. Fist they did a sineogram to test and make sure that there was no communication with my colon. If you recall I've had 3 sineograms before on this drain, all of which showed no communication with the colon. This one however turned up a different result. Once they put the dye in the drain it was obvious to them right away that there was communication with the colon. So they flushed out the drain (only partially since some of the holes were blocked) and abscess, inserted a wire in the old drain, pulled that drain out and then inserted a new drain over the wire that was in place. So now I have a new drain in my butt in a slightly different place than the old one. Hopefully it works better than the old one.

As I'm sure you can imagine, having a colon that leaks fluid out into my body cavity is not a good thing. The hope is that the hole will heal itself but if that doesn't happen I may need surgery to either repair the hole or, if that's not possible, create a permanent colostomy. Obviously I'm hoping for the hole to heal itself but who knows what will happen. I'm also not sure what this all means for starting my chemo. I know they won't want to start it while I have an infection but I'm not sure how long they will wait. Hopefully they don't have to wait until my colon is fixed because I have a feeling that could be a long time.

This morning we got up and headed down to the stampede parade with Granny and Grandad. It was good fun to get out of the house and see something different. As usual I think the bus ride downtown was the highlight for the wee folks.