I have some good news to report that my dad’s CT scan in July came back clear – no tumors were seen in his liver (or anywhere else) since his surgery in April! He will have a follow-up scan in 3 months, along with blood work for tumor markers (which have so far always been in the normal range).
My dad is really doing great right now, too. It took him a while to recover from the whipple, but he’s starting to gain back some weight, has gone back to his part-time job and is even planning a trip to visit us at the end of the month.
A brief history: they found a tumor in the distal bile duct in March and he had the whipple at the Mayo in Jackonsville in April. The lymph nodes were clean, but they did see 4 spots in the liver, which were small and mostly removed for the biopsies. 2 samples came back as malignant and the tumor in the bile duct had attached to the portal vein, so he was designated as Stage IV.
Not very good news, so we were trying to decide on whether to go ahead with standard chemo or enter a clinical trial. After much research and speaking to his doctor, we decided he should have a follow-up CT scan so we would know exactly what we were dealing with, since we had no idea if any new tumors had appeared since his surgery. He had the CT scan in July, which was 3 months after the surgery. And the scan came back clean, so for now we are not going to do anything except enjoy life and hope for the best when he has the next scan in October.
I’ll continue to follow this board and hope and pray that others will have equally good news to share.
I will update when he has his next scan in October.
zuzuby