Monday, August 18, 2008

Meeting with Oncologist

We met with the oncologist this noon, and didn't get any big surprises. During the surgery, not only did the surgeon spend an hour sorting through my guts to see how big the tumor was and what it attached to but he called in a vascular surgeon specifically to check out the hepatic blood vessels. The vascular surgeon was the one who said that it was inoperable. I guess it's better to know for sure.

The plan at the moment is for me to go back on Gemcitabine, the chemo that I was on before, and to have it every week for three weeks and then one week off. In a way, this is good news, because I tolerate Gemcitabine well and it seems to work well for me.

Jerry and I ran the other possibilities past him, mostly cyberknife and curcumin. He pointed out that cyberknife wouldn't work if the tumor was entwined with the blood vessels any more than a scalpel would; but he accepted my adding curcumin to my regimen, though he had a rather bemused expression on his face. I don't think he runs across exotic Indian spices too often.

We came back and went up to Stone Pond for a while. It was therapeutic.

3 comments:

Arctic-mermaid said...

Lucie My Dear;
Well it's good that you've had the meeting and now know the path forward. I'm glad that the curcumin wasn't totally discounted. So much fun to cook with it and related spices. you can become an expert in Indian cooking. Just maybe draw the line at curcumin ice cream....

jenny said...

hey lucie, glad you finally had your meeting so at least now you have a game plan. that sounds good considering you did well with it last time. and an afternoon at stone pond sounds so relaxing. i think we went there when we visited years ago, it was beautiful.

Jo said...

Dear Lucie

Glad to hear you are going to Stone Pond. Good luck with the curcumin - when I was doing radiation the naturopath had me eating 2 tbs of turmeric a day (yecch). Also there was alot of interesting research on curcumin back in the '90s for HIV symptoms. It worked, but no drug company wanted it because it is too cheap.

Anyway. Lots of love. Take care.
Love
Jo