Highlights from Wednesday Meetings

Wow -- today was one of the most draining days of my life!! As you know, we had meetings all day with my various doctors: the surgeon (Dr Garcia-Aguilar), the liver oncologist (Dr Warren), and my main oncologist (Dr Gullion), and our neighbor (Michael) who is a gastro oncologist. I am basically brain-dead right now so I'll just share the quick highlights:

> My surgery is officially scheduled for Friday, June 8th. I am supposed to be there at 9am and the surgery is expected to last 3-4 hours. Given that UCSF seems to chronically run about 2 hours late, that puts me in surgery until about 3pm PST.
> Dr Garcia-Aguilar expects that I'll be in the hospital for a week (give or take a day), and then will likely be moving slowly for another 3-4 weeks after that.
> Dr Warren was the most conservative of all the doctors we met with regarding the interpretation of the PET/CT scan results. He is still not convinced that the spot on my liver is not cancer...actually, let me rephrase that....He is cautiously optimistic that it is NOT cancer, but he doesn't want to take any chances. Therefore, he is still going to do an ultrasound during my surgery. Depending on what he sees in the ultrasound he might also do a biopsy and possibly resect that portion of my liver while I am under the anesthesia.
> This additional procedure will cause me a bit more pain and healing afterwards, but Pete and I are in complete agreement with Dr Warren. As we all discussed, we'd rather be 200% confident that it's not cancer, than be 90% confident and end up being be wrong.
> So, after my surgery next week, we should know with complete certainty exactly what the freckle on my liver is. And we will also have peace of mind that the main tumor is gone forever.
> When we met with Dr Gullion, I asked him what his impressions were of the scan results and his response was "I think that they are marvelous!" Yippee!!! I LOVE that word...marvelous!
> According to Dr Gullion, the next phase of chemo will start about a month after surgery depending on how my recovery goes. I'll go through 8 rounds of a drug called FOLFOX, which is the same drug that I took before combined with two additional drugs. I will go in every two weeks for treatment (as opposed to wearing the continuous pump like I did before) and so the 8 treatments will take about 4 months. This means that, if all goes as planned, I will be completely done with treatment shortly before Thanksgiving of this year. I can't think of a better thing to be thankful for than to be alive and cancer-free!!
> Lastly, my neighbor, Michael, just came over to see if we had any remaining questions that did not get answered from our meetings today. He agreed that the PET/CT results were fabulous. He said that we could not have hoped for a better outcome and that we have good reason to feel optimistic. Hallelujah!!