“I Couldn’t Be More Pleased . . . “

I met with my surgeon Mark Arnold yesterday for the first follow up evaluation after my most recent surgery. I asked him how he felt about my status and he said, “I couldn’t be more pleased with the outcome . . .”  So I asked him, do you mean the surgery or the pathology? and he said, “everything.”

Now you probably don’t know Mark Arnold, or even more so, you probably haven’t spent a lot of time with cancer doctors (try not too),  so you need to know that cancer doctors are very logical and they tend to keep their cards very close to the vest. So, when they express their opinion beyond the mechanics of the procedure or the specifics of the current diagnosis  it can be surprising!  And with Mark, he takes it one step further. In the most loving way, I like to refer to Mark as using words “like they cost him a dollar.” I can’t take credit for this line, but trust me, I’m not the only one who recognizes his frugality with words.

Mark and I have developed a good relationship, which probably isn’t necessarily a good thing, but the reality is that we’ve spent a lot of time together, and I think the world of him. When we met yesterday, he was very positive about our chances of a good outcome, and to me that’s a reason for celebration.

Here’s where we are at with Larry (surgery), Curly (Chemotherapy), and Moe (Radiation).

I have recovered from surgery remarkably well.  This most recent surgery was perhaps the most major yet, which is saying something since I’ve had a third of my right lung removed, and this is my third abdominal surgery in 22 months.  In this most recent surgery, the majority of my rectum was removed as was a block of tissue measuring 8” long  x  4″ wide  x 2″ deep. That’s about the size of an 2 average golf divots. Inside that block of tissue was a golf ball sized tumor.

Yes, I did just work golf into a story about cancer surgery!

Other than the misplaced “Titleist,” there were no other tumor deposits present in the tissue block that was removed, all lymph nodes removed were negative and the margins of the block of tissue were also clear (negative) for any presence of cancer.  The “Titleist” is the same cell mutation (MSI-H) as my primary colon cancer which means it is a recurrence of the colon cancer.  The DNA mutation (MSI-H) is susceptible to radiation which is another positive in our favor.

Now we move on to Curly (Chemotherapy) and Moe (Radiation).  This will hopefully begin on 9/6 and end on 10/10. If you are counting, that is 5 weeks of treatment.  I will receive radiation each day M-F for 5 weeks and simultaneously take chemotherapy in the form of a pill (2x each day). The goal of this phase is to destroy any microscopic presence of the cancer cells in the remaining tissue in my pelvis/abdomen.

Thanks everyone for your support and let’s keep crushing it!