I may be a new member of the club

I just thought I would share the latest on my health roller coaster , as I last mentioned the spyglass ERCP biopsy came back negative, although they still think there is a good chance it is cancer, but will not know for sure until they get in and cut it out. (Whipple like operation, how much they have remove will be determined when they get in best case it will just be some of the duct, it may also include head of the pancreas or even part of the liver. I had some gallbladder flare up last week, and had a surgical consult and CAT scan Tuesday, which found I had a highly inflamed and possibly perforated gallbladder, so they instantly admitted me to the hospital and the next morning put a drain tube into my gallbladder, so now I am laying around in a hospital room with IV antibiotics, surgery scheduled for next Friday, with luck I will get to go home for 3-4 days before the surgery, depending on if they can convert me over to oral antibiotics.

Ike.

The biopsy results came in today as non-malignant, we have only talked to the doctor’s assistant so don’t know the details yet. After the ERCP last week the doctor told my wife that he wanted to refer me to a surgeon to have a bile duct resection to remove the growth as well as have my gallbladder removed regardless of the outcome of this biopsy, so it looks like I am still on a course to have somewhat risky surgery. It was also noted that a negative biopsy does not rule out early stage cancer, and that often these tumors are precancerous. Anyway I am now awaiting more news, and see where we go from here, it has been a long 6 days of waiting. I hope no one minds if I hang around here, ask some questions, etc. as even if I am not a member of the club, there is likely some relavent crossover information.

Ike.

Thanks to everyone for your words of support, I am sure I will be asking a lot of targeted questions in the near future, we just made it home from Houston, saw no sense in sticking around there waiting on the biopsy results which we should have in the next couple of days. We talked with the gastroenterologist’s assistant today, once the biopsy results are in it sounds like they will be referring me to a surgeon that specializes in these types of cases and probably an oncologist, I am not sure why the delay since from the way they were talking this is the same basic plan regardless of the biopsy results. I am trying to keep a positive attitude, on one positive note I am glad I finally bought an Aflac cancer policy earlier this year. On a less upbeat ironic note it just occurred to me that in a strange way my family seems to be becoming more mainstream, my grandmother (on my father’s side) died of a rare cancer 1 in 3,000,0000+ slow growing blood cancer, my father just died in Feb. of a rare cancer that effects around 1 in 200,000 and now it looks like I likely have a 1 in 50,000 cancer. Of well sorry about the rant there but at least these little thoughts are half way distractions from the topic of the moment. Good luck to all of you out there in your ordeals and I will keep you posted on my progress if we can call it that.