Doctor day, including perhaps more info than you want

We went up to Lebanon to check in with the surgeon and oncologist at DHMC. Both agreed that I'm doing well. The surgeon promises that within a year I'll just have a white line down my middle. The oncologist spent over 45 minutes answering questions and clarifying things for us. He agrees with the treatment that the Keene oncologist has started me on. The regimen of Gemzar I'm on isn't the newest treatment, but it consistently works as well as, or better than, the newer ones. I asked specifically about combination treatments, and he said that the only one the FDA approves does add to longevity in a statistically significant manner -- ie it adds two weeks of survival time, at the cost of diarrhea and an itchy skin rash. Well, it would seem even longer.
We asked about the feasibility of taking a week's vacation next winter, and he told us to go for it. So we're daydreaming about somewhere warm.
Jerry asked the hard questions, the ones I didn't dare ask because I didn't want to upset him: how long? and how? They won't say how long, but the surgeon, at least, was talking in terms of years rather than months. He said that even from looking directly at the mass it was impossible to tell what was tumor and what was scar tissue. It's even possible, though unlikely, that it's all scar tissue and I'll go on indefinitely. (And this is from a man who knows his way around the giblets.) What's more likely is that there is still some cancer left, but that the continuing chemo can keep it under control for some time to come.
The oncologist described death from pancreatic cancer as a kind of "dwindling away," with increasing loss of appetite and sleeping more and more. The way he talked about it, it sounded as though there are worse ways to go.
I'm not including all this information because I expect we'll need it any time in the near future -- as I said above, both doctors seemed to think that I have years left. Call it (literally) morbid curiosity.
And now I can go on and think about other things.