First blog in a while, but I am sitting at in the hospital while my father has just been taken from surgery to recovery. At 8am this morning he had a Whipple procedure and 40% of his pancreas was removed, along with 30% of his stomach. The surgeons consider the surgery to have been a success and they believe that they have removed the whole tumour. We will have to wait for another week to get the pathology results from the lab, but it is all looking very good and my father is now expected to make a full recovery.
It will take a while for my father to recover (and he's going to be on nil by mouth for up to a week- nice) but it seems that he is out of the woods for the moment. We still need to wait for the pathology report, but there is good reason to be cheerful.
After all that, it seems a bit of a let down, really. I feel that we at least deserve a medal. Instead my father gets to live another day. Just like before the cancer. Of course people got faced with their own mortality and some of us reassessed our lives and life will never be exactly the same. But it feels too much the same for my comfort. Does defeated cancer really leave a lasting impression. Complacency and habit return very quickly.
But don't mind me. Selfish. And tired. Meh.
Showing posts with label surgery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label surgery. Show all posts
Thursday, 29 April 2010
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Decisions, Decisions
So, I fell asleep with the phone on my chest last night, until the call finally came. This will mostly be a medical post, so bear with me.
In short, the spot on my father's liver has not moved. It's a bloody fat deposit, like we claimed all along. Which means that his cancer has always been localised, which is fantasitc news. Also, the tumour is exactly the same size and does not seem to be spreading. Also good.
Now, what MD Anderson would like to do is send him for another round of chemo (with different chemicals - don't ask me why) and then radiation and then, hopefully surgery. We like surgery. Only problem is that my parents have French Surgeon who is willing to operate on it now, more or less. MD Anderson are worried that this could cause the cancer to spread (remember the angry tumour? We don't like him) thus effectively killing him.
The question therefore remains: Do we go the "safe route" and risk the cancer spreading despite the chemo, rendering it inoperable? Or do we operate now and take the risk that it will fail?
My parents are discussing it, along with Family Friend Doctor and many other people. It's the best possible outcome so far, but still leaves my family with some difficult choices.
After my parent's rang, my brother rang, thus waking me up again.
-"Have you heard anything?"
- "Um, yes. They called about 20 minutes ago"
- "BASTARDS!"
- "I think they may have rung me first because they know that I am 6 hours ahead of them and you are not"
- "BASTARDS!"
So, that's the update. Good news all round, but I am waiting to find out what they think further.
For me, this either means that my dad will be back in Israel for more chemo, which I might skip this time around, or he is going for the surgery, which I will definitely be joining them for.
It's a big like a soap opera cliffhanger.
Will she stay or will she go?
In short, the spot on my father's liver has not moved. It's a bloody fat deposit, like we claimed all along. Which means that his cancer has always been localised, which is fantasitc news. Also, the tumour is exactly the same size and does not seem to be spreading. Also good.
Now, what MD Anderson would like to do is send him for another round of chemo (with different chemicals - don't ask me why) and then radiation and then, hopefully surgery. We like surgery. Only problem is that my parents have French Surgeon who is willing to operate on it now, more or less. MD Anderson are worried that this could cause the cancer to spread (remember the angry tumour? We don't like him) thus effectively killing him.
The question therefore remains: Do we go the "safe route" and risk the cancer spreading despite the chemo, rendering it inoperable? Or do we operate now and take the risk that it will fail?
My parents are discussing it, along with Family Friend Doctor and many other people. It's the best possible outcome so far, but still leaves my family with some difficult choices.
After my parent's rang, my brother rang, thus waking me up again.
-"Have you heard anything?"
- "Um, yes. They called about 20 minutes ago"
- "BASTARDS!"
- "I think they may have rung me first because they know that I am 6 hours ahead of them and you are not"
- "BASTARDS!"
So, that's the update. Good news all round, but I am waiting to find out what they think further.
For me, this either means that my dad will be back in Israel for more chemo, which I might skip this time around, or he is going for the surgery, which I will definitely be joining them for.
It's a big like a soap opera cliffhanger.
Will she stay or will she go?
Sunday, 8 November 2009
"Cut me open, Doc"
We went to see a surgeon yesterday, who shall be henceforth known as French Surgeon. He is French. He said that he would be more than willing to operate on my father's tumour, providing that on the 1st of December the tests show that the spot on his liver has either shrunk or not done anything. So, we are praying. The selfish bit of me quite fancies spending the second week of December in Paris!
However, he also says that there is no point in operating on it if the tumour keeps metastisising ("spreading", for us laypeople). It will not prolong his life and would be pointless.
For one optimistic and completely unrealistic moment, I thought, "well, that means that in December or January he can have the surgery. Potentially French Surgeon will get it all out and then our lives will be back to normal. How weird would that be?" Then my mother reminded me that he would have at least 6 months of further post-operative treatment, even in the best possible case.
Ah, whatever. I am fed up of not looking towards any future at all. So even if I make them up, I feel that I am entitled to, as no one can possibly tell me that I am mistaken.
London tomorrow.
As a side note, I have been reading some blogs of people I barely know and am currently feeling better about the rubbish I post on here. At least my grammar is up to scratch!
However, he also says that there is no point in operating on it if the tumour keeps metastisising ("spreading", for us laypeople). It will not prolong his life and would be pointless.
For one optimistic and completely unrealistic moment, I thought, "well, that means that in December or January he can have the surgery. Potentially French Surgeon will get it all out and then our lives will be back to normal. How weird would that be?" Then my mother reminded me that he would have at least 6 months of further post-operative treatment, even in the best possible case.
Ah, whatever. I am fed up of not looking towards any future at all. So even if I make them up, I feel that I am entitled to, as no one can possibly tell me that I am mistaken.
London tomorrow.
As a side note, I have been reading some blogs of people I barely know and am currently feeling better about the rubbish I post on here. At least my grammar is up to scratch!
Monday, 12 October 2009
Gearing up to going back in
My father feels ill. Well, duh. On Saturday he had chemo, but what is really making him feel shitty is the operation he had on Thursday to sort out his stent. It's basically like having a big piece of metal stuck up your pancreas. So I can sympathise.
The doctors didn't give him enough drugs right after the surgery, so my mother was ringing all and sundry to try to get him some decent, morphine-based medication. In the meanwhile, they were supposed to fly out of Houston yesterday and do a stopover in Geneva. However, my father was not feeling well enough at the time, so they stayed and extra day and have scrapped the stop-over. They will be in Israel this afternoon. I should probably return my grandmother's call. But it's freakishly restful being out here doing nothing.
I am going back into the eye of the storm on Friday. Speaking to my brother, I got the impression that my father does not want him in Israel. I worry that I am wedging myself in where I am not needed or wanted, and wonder how far I should go with what I want without becoming a truly selfish being. When speaking to my father on the phone yesterday, I mentioned that I wanted to talk to him, when I saw him, about the dates for my future comings and goings. He sighed. It's too much effort for him to talk about booking flights, so how can I expect him to talk about anything of substance, which we will have to be discussing at some point. Note to self. Bring a notebook and pen, in case he has enough energy. If it's not too macabre, I might take my video camera.
In the meanwhile, I have had a steady stream of visitors and visits. I am still lining them up for before I go, but I will be back about a week on Friday, so let me know if you would like to meet up.
Just a small, really selfish rant, before I go to M&S to buy more shirts for my dad: Why is it that all the good jobs come up when I can't apply for them. I have had to ban myself from looking at the job pages, because it's too depressing that I can't do any of them. "starting now", "starting next week", "starting 28th October". Gah! I will just have to be amazingly productive all on my own, with nothing that needs to be done longterm, or in direct contact with other people. Now would be a really good time to start that novel...
The doctors didn't give him enough drugs right after the surgery, so my mother was ringing all and sundry to try to get him some decent, morphine-based medication. In the meanwhile, they were supposed to fly out of Houston yesterday and do a stopover in Geneva. However, my father was not feeling well enough at the time, so they stayed and extra day and have scrapped the stop-over. They will be in Israel this afternoon. I should probably return my grandmother's call. But it's freakishly restful being out here doing nothing.
I am going back into the eye of the storm on Friday. Speaking to my brother, I got the impression that my father does not want him in Israel. I worry that I am wedging myself in where I am not needed or wanted, and wonder how far I should go with what I want without becoming a truly selfish being. When speaking to my father on the phone yesterday, I mentioned that I wanted to talk to him, when I saw him, about the dates for my future comings and goings. He sighed. It's too much effort for him to talk about booking flights, so how can I expect him to talk about anything of substance, which we will have to be discussing at some point. Note to self. Bring a notebook and pen, in case he has enough energy. If it's not too macabre, I might take my video camera.
In the meanwhile, I have had a steady stream of visitors and visits. I am still lining them up for before I go, but I will be back about a week on Friday, so let me know if you would like to meet up.
Just a small, really selfish rant, before I go to M&S to buy more shirts for my dad: Why is it that all the good jobs come up when I can't apply for them. I have had to ban myself from looking at the job pages, because it's too depressing that I can't do any of them. "starting now", "starting next week", "starting 28th October". Gah! I will just have to be amazingly productive all on my own, with nothing that needs to be done longterm, or in direct contact with other people. Now would be a really good time to start that novel...
Thursday, 8 October 2009
Someone else's story
Still not much to report. Father has gone back to work (apparently. Although I am pretty sure the medical advice says that he probably shouldn't). He is getting his stent removed today, the little valve-opening device that keeps his pancreas functioning. This is a leftover from the days when they thought he had pancreatitis. It's working fine, but they are replacing it because the chemotherapy is going to block it off completely unless it's made of hardier material.
After all the other things that he's been through, it feels like a walk in the park, even though he is still going to be anaesthetised and it still may take a couple of hours of surgery. It's strange how your perspective on things change with the situation. Under epistemology, I would call it contextualism, but I would lose all my readers, so I won't!
Still in London. Very easy to pretend that things are normal when I am here. In one way, it's nice and comforting and it's the least stressed that I have been in a good long time. On the other hand, I wonder whether I should be feeling normal. You can very normally shut your eyes and go through life blind to the triumph and tragedy of it all. Yes, you can ignore it, and we say ignorance is bliss. I am not suggesting this is a good way to go, but as a thought experiment: What if I avoided it all? Whatever happens happens, and I don't want to be in the loop, I don't want to be told whether things are better or worse. If they work out, great, and if they don't, I don't need to know.
Clearly that would not work on a practical level, but what about the emotional one? Let's pretend that it was not my father who was ill, but some beloved film star. Let's call him Patrick Swayze. If I truly care about his fate, is it healthier to follow his progress determinedly and to know the instant something happened, or is it better to not know the circumstances of his death and live happily in the belief that he's fine somewhere?
For now, I will say, all other considerations aside, it's the "sadder-but-wiser girl for me". And the thought experiment does not work anyway, because he's my father and the criteria are different.
Meh. Dawn is breaking. And waiting.
After all the other things that he's been through, it feels like a walk in the park, even though he is still going to be anaesthetised and it still may take a couple of hours of surgery. It's strange how your perspective on things change with the situation. Under epistemology, I would call it contextualism, but I would lose all my readers, so I won't!
Still in London. Very easy to pretend that things are normal when I am here. In one way, it's nice and comforting and it's the least stressed that I have been in a good long time. On the other hand, I wonder whether I should be feeling normal. You can very normally shut your eyes and go through life blind to the triumph and tragedy of it all. Yes, you can ignore it, and we say ignorance is bliss. I am not suggesting this is a good way to go, but as a thought experiment: What if I avoided it all? Whatever happens happens, and I don't want to be in the loop, I don't want to be told whether things are better or worse. If they work out, great, and if they don't, I don't need to know.
Clearly that would not work on a practical level, but what about the emotional one? Let's pretend that it was not my father who was ill, but some beloved film star. Let's call him Patrick Swayze. If I truly care about his fate, is it healthier to follow his progress determinedly and to know the instant something happened, or is it better to not know the circumstances of his death and live happily in the belief that he's fine somewhere?
For now, I will say, all other considerations aside, it's the "sadder-but-wiser girl for me". And the thought experiment does not work anyway, because he's my father and the criteria are different.
Meh. Dawn is breaking. And waiting.
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