The Liver

Before I share my experience from this appointment I would like to remind everyone that I am not a medical professional and this is my interpretation of how everything was explained to me. 

The mass in the colon was removed but since it spread to my liver, it is now time to focus on getting the cancer off my liver.

On Friday, Mike and I took a mini road trip up to City of Hope Duarte. The drive was about an hour and when we got there we were amazed at how huge the campus was.  We met with the surgeon who specializes in liver surgery and our meeting was very positive. Since I have 5 lesions on my liver she pulled up my imaging and explained her plan for how she was going to remove each one of them. She had a cartoon image of a liver and drew each of them on there. The liver is on your right side and is almost tucked under my ribs so I was curious how she would get to it for the surgery. She said the incision would be through my midline (about 5 inches above my belly button). Her plan is to use Ablation (basically burn) 4 of them and then cut out the 5th that is closer to the surface. During the surgery she will also implant a HAI pump (it is about the size of my palm and will be a port for chemo).  This will allow them to use a specific chemo and target it directly to the liver. My surgery will be up in Duarte and I should expect to stay at the hospital for 4-5 nights and then plan to heal at home for 6ish weeks. After surgery I will heal for a couple weeks and then start chemo back up. The "cocktail" will be slightly different and we will do about 5- 6 rounds of it. 

It is so nice to have doctors who work together from the beginning to come up with a plan to get rid of all the cancer.