hamptonsarasota

I’m gonna throw a Mazel Tov in there, you can’t have too many religions praying for you with CC involved! I had plenty of different ones during my current journey. Fantastic news. Mention to the doc if they have a cancellation that you are willing to move up in line, I did, and my original 9/21/11 date was bumped up a week to 9/14, can’t hurt to ask, can it??

Pru,
One symptom you mentioned was nausea after he ate. That was definitely one of my symptoms, every time I ate anything whether it was a large or small meal I would have nausea. I had the right branch of my bile duct blocked right where it splits just inside the liver. Immediately after installation of the stent (via the ERCP procedure) my symptoms started to recede and the nausea stopped almost right away, literally the next meal I ate had no nausea. My other main symptom was very dark urine (almost orange and chalky it seemed) and occasional (not the greatest subject matter here…) very light or clay colored floating stools. My billiruben didn’t get above 3.0, maybe even less than that from what I recall, so I did itch but not insanely all the time. Itching was present mostly shoulders/back and legs a bit too. My blockage was so small that it was virtually undetectable with an MRI and the ultrasound so the ERCP was the only way to know for sure. Of course, mine was done pre-surgery prior to my ‘modified anatomy’ also…

Don’t know if this will help you or not, but that’s what I had for symptoms and a blockage was definitely (Klatskin’s tumor) there in the wall of the bile duct.

LeeAnn,
I’m 40, and technically wasn’t diagnosed until after my resection surgery but symptoms started late August and 9/14/11 I had my surgery. I’ve got an 11 year old daughter and 13 year old son as well (very close in age to yours too!) I’m similar to you in that I had no lymph node involvement and clean margins. I had the same question that you have, chemo or not? At Sloan Kettering in NY, it was standard protocol with CC to have adjuvant chemo and subsequently radiation with chemo after that. Sooooooo, I’m doing the chemo. Was your cancer present in the liver or just bile ducts? Mine was bile duct only and that was the only location, nothing had spread anywhere else.

My wife and I weighed the options and I would rather do the chemo as a preventative measure versus having a recurrence 5 years from now and wonder if I had done the chemo right up front would it have made a difference. I have had 2 treatments of Gemzar and this Friday after I get home from Houston I’ll have my first Gemzar/Cisplatin treatment (if they give it to me, got 2 nice blisters on my left hand, darn chain saw muffler is hot…). I haven’t discussed with my local oncologist in Sarasota how long we would go for, and Dr. Javle at MD Anderson made the same recommendation regarding treatment even though I had clean margins.

If you read Lainy’s posts, her Teddy was similar in that he had clean margins yet I don’t believe he did any adjuvant chemo and had a recurrence several years later. It’s a very tough decision. Mine was easy in that I’m still young, healthy, and should be able to tolerate it well. We shall see on Friday! In any event, I wish you luck in your decision process. Know that all here offer all the support in the world!!

Hi, I’m Derin Hampton, born in Ft. Lauderdale, school at USF in Tampa for Mechanical Engineering, lived in Jacksonville, FL for 10 years where our two kids Hunter, 13 and Sydney 11 were born and my wife got her masters degree at UNF, and moved to Sarasota, FL in 2005. My wife of 16.5 years is Eileen. She’s mom to our kids and substitute teaches here and there. I’m a project manager for the mechanical division of a construction company that does government contracts for the most part.

I was getting nauseous after I ate anything, had really dark urine, and itched like crazy. Checked into Sarasota Memorial Hospital, CT and ultrasound didn’t show anything. ERCP and installation of a stent to relieve the symptoms showed a very small 1cmx0.5cmx0.7cm mass on the right bile duct right above the Y just inside the liver. We called and called and got an appointment at Sloan Kettering, flew up and had surgery scheduled for the 21st of Sept. Someone cancelled, I was bumped up to the 14th, and here I am doing adjuvant chemo as a preventative measure. Took out the gall bladder, all of the bile duct, 3/4 of the liver and used my small intestines to make a new bile duct. All margins were clear by at least 0.7cm too. I’m still working out, exercising, working, and carrying on like there isn’t any caustic chemical being injected in me on a weekly basis. So far, so good!