Resection Gave my Husband five great years of life!

Hello, my name is Sandra and I am so very happy that this forum has been founded. Five years ago my husband was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma and the internet resources were not nearly as robust. This forum is wonderful.

On resection and physicians, my husband was diagnosed at Mass General Hospital and the entire surgical team said that resection was not possible. At the time my husband was 52 years old and up until his diagnosis was an extremely healthy, fun-loving husband, father and grandfather. We simply would not accept the doctor’s pronouncement of eminent death in less than 8 weeks! My husband had a large malignant tumor in his right lobe….the left lobe was functioning well and compensating. My son got on the internet and found Dr. Rick Selby at the Univ. of Southern California who felt that the tumor was resectable and performed the 10 hour surgery…without a blood transfusion…because of our religious beliefs. The surgery was successful…my husband regained weight….with a very healthy appetite for both food and life. The 5 years gained were great. Two years after the surgery small tumors were identified in his lungs; however we opted not to use chemotherapy. My husband continued on until last year when he began to experience discomfort in his abdominal area….this progressed until October, 2005 when he nearly died of an infection in his abdominal area due to a perforated intestine and blocked duodenum. He never recovered from a 12 day hospital stay and finally passed away in February 2005. The cause of death was septis; cholangiocarcinoma. I have many questions about what happened and how it happened. For example, the doctors never confirmed that the cancer was back in the abdominal area. The focus was on infection.