Introductions
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Zupton,
Welcome to our little corner of the world, sorry you have found yourself a tourist here. I am pulling for the Gemcitabine and Cisplatin combo to make some headway so the surgeon can work his/her magic. Please keep us posted.
Patty
p.s. To Kris, and I can’t stand people who kick puppies!
Hi Zupton and welcome to the best little club in the world that no one wishes to join. My husband had a Whipple 2 X within 4 weeks as the first one was aborted. He was 73 and honestly he is a walking miracle. Please don’t pay attention to statistics as we continually prove them wrong! Teddy is now 77 and golfs and wants to go back to work part time. You have youth so to speak on your side. Read up as much as you can, even our old posts, as to be fore warmed is best so you will know what questions to ask. We can all understand the fright but soon that will turn to fight, trust me. Please keep us posted and feel free to come here to vent, advise or ask.
Welcome!
I’m glad you are tolerating your treatment well, and I hope you see results so that you can get both surgeries.
I’m around your age and my mother is fighting this disease, but it amazes me how many ‘younger’ people like yourself are diagnosed with CC. Do you also have PSC?? ( I ask because Crone’s and UC and other similar PSC related diseases usually are then associated with CC).Please keep us posted on your treatments and best of luck.
Ashley
PS
Kris – you had me laughing at your post because I really HATE beets!
Zupton…I would also like to welcome you. With time, the right solution will come to you and your surgeon. In the meantime I am wishing for positive results from the current treatment. I am glad that you have found us because you can count on plenty of support coming your way.
All my best wishes,
MarionThanks for the kind welcome. This has all been quite a whirlwind for me. It’s nice to have some time (weeks) during chemo to digest things.
Overall, I think that I’ve lead a pretty good life….this is just the next step in the journey for me. I’m hoping that the chemo will be successful enough that they can do the whipple and resection SEPARATELY (or maybe no whipple at all). My surgeon says that doing the two procedures at the same time has about a 50-50 survival rate, and that’s just getting through the first 24 hours. Needless to say, my family and I have some tough decisions coming.
Right now, I’m praying for the chemo to work, praying for my wife and kids, and hoping that I’ll get through this. Thank you for the welcome, and I hope to keep posting as I go through this.
-Z
Zupton,
Welcome to the site. Dont be overwhelmed by everyone dropping in to say hello. we are a very friendly crowd and you will not find a better place for support, comfort, compassion and information (I do like to toot our own horn).i am sorry the surgery was a no go and they found more than everyone was expecting. Let yourself absorb this information, let your body and mind heal then let that chemo beat up your cancer. We never know what is around the corner, but life is always a bit amusing so why not fight for it?
So they are contemplating a whipple and a resection? Did you invent high heels, come up with the idea of eating beets or kick puppies in a former life to deserve such surgery?
Hope the chemo goes well and you get to be the first one (to my knowledge) on this board to get the double whammy.
Kris
I’ve just discovered this site, the discussion boards and the struggles and hope that are contained here. Here is my story as an introduction:
I am a 35 year-old man, and I was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma in early July, 2009. At that time, there was a 12cm, poorly-differentiated tumor in my liver and some involvement in the surrounding lymph nodes.
I am lucky to live in the Washington, D.C. area (at least with respect to this) and am being treated by the doctors at the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute. The surgeon there advocated for aggressive liver resection followed by chemotherapy. This was the opposite of what my other doctors had suggested. However, after much soul-searching, my family and I thought that the NIH route would be the best, so I signed up.
Unfortunately, I also have an intestinal disease called Crohn’s disease. I had two previous abdominal surgeries that left me with a lot of scarring on the inside. Also, there was some damage to my remaining, non-cancerous liver that was done by the Crohn’s drugs. Finally, when they got inside to do the surgery, it looked like there was some cancer in the distal bile duct near my pancreas. After all of that, the surgeons decided to sew me up without removing or resecting anything.
So, now I’m finishing up my first course of Gemcitabine and Cisplatin. I’m in the “one week off” part of the 21 day cycle. I seem to be tolerating that well, with only a bit of fatigue. The hope is that some combination of this treatment and chemoembolization will make surgery a better option. However, it looks like the surgery that could prolong my life is both a radical liver resection and a whipple procedure. To say the least, that is terrifying.
I look forward to continuing to read the information that is here. Thank you all for everything that is already done, and I look forward to contributing some tidbits of information so that others may be helped.
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