sharimay

Thanks everyone for the welcomes and good wishes.
Patty – I had been having some right upper quadrant abdomen pain for a few months and kept putting it off as my gallbladder. It wasn’t anything that affected my daily life. I was camping one weekend with my family and started to have more severe pain in my right upper and really couldn’t get comfortable. Since that was different for me I went into the clinic on Monday and just thought that it was my gallbladder acting up. They did lab work which looked good, the only liver enzyme elevated was my alkaline phosphatase. I then had an ultrasound which didn’t show problems with my gallbladder, but masses on/in my liver. I had a CT of my abdomen that day which confirmed the masses in my liver, but we didn’t know what they were. Working in the hospital, the next day I was able to review my CT with a radiologist who then did a biopsy the next day. It took a long time for the final pathology results to come back, but they did come back with atypical cells. That was a hard one to hear. My primary doctor was amazing at getting me to Mayo in Rochester as soon as possible and I met with both a hepatologist and liver surgeon the same day. They both reviewed my scan and surgery was planned. I feel so fortunate that everything went so quickly. From the time I learned I had “something” on my liver to the day I had surgery was exactly 3 weeks. They did stage my CC stage 3, mostly because I had one large tumor 20cm x 12cm x 11cm, and one smaller tumor. I recovered well from surgery and was able to return back to work in 6 weeks. I had a few bumps in the road after surgery including a large pleural effusion that had to be drained, a scare with “something” that was on the left side of my liver that turned out to be a benign focular hyperplasia which I had before surgery, and it took 7 weeks for my bile leak to seal itself so I carted around a JP drain for that long.
Marion – Chemo went great yesterday. I didn’t feel sick at all. I still don’t feel sick, but its 4am and I can’t sleep. My regimen is Cisplatin/Gemzar on Day 1 and Day 8 and Day 15 off repeated for 8 cycles. It will be a long next 6 months, but if I can feel this way with it, I think I can handle it. They premedicated me with zofran, emend, and dexamethasone. I think the insomnia might be related to the steriod.

I cannot wait to read more and have some place for me to ask questions. Everybody has been awesome and so helpful.

Thanks again,
Shari