Mary talked to Dr. Chang yesterday about how long it will be to get back to normal after all this radiation. His opinion is a six to eight week cycle to get to "full on" again. That is probably true but I bet she'll be feeling a whole bunch better by Wednesday next week because no one has stuffed her into a machine and nuked her with xrays for a whole seven days!
Dee, from Mary's bookclub, dropped by yesterday with the planned chicken dinner. Very, very nice! Thank you, Dee. She fixed two kinds of chicken so that I had a bit more flavor than Mary's--and pesto chicken sure does. She also fixed a wonderful pasta dish for me! Thank you! Rice, broccoli and the two wonderful kinds of chicken were a wonderful dinner! Thank you, thank you!
Mary did pretty good yesterday compared to other Mondays. I perceive her spirits are definitely up as she realizes this phase of the therapy is coming to an end. We are both looking forward to no medical intervention for four weeks and hoping her system recovers and grows healthy quickly during that time.
I have been doing some more reading about Cholangiocarcinoma, specifically on chemotherapy treatment and its efficacy. The problem, of course, is that as a non-professional I do not have access to the latest and greatest information from around the world. What I have learned is that Mary has a whole string of positives for her long-term outlook. The cancer was found early, the surgery was successful, her liver regenerated successfully and she had minimal impact from the combined radiation + chemo therapy of the past six weeks (basically nausea and that was handled with meds.) And, of course, she is Young, Active, Healthy and Thin (YAHT was the opinion of the surgeon going into this and Mary really liked this statement.
The only negative in this string (other than the damned cancer being there in the first place) is that the margins on the removed liver and other organs were not adequate leaving the likelihood the cancer remained in the body. And, this cancer does not produce markers that can be detected outside the body. CT Scans, MRIs, PET Scans, Ultrasounds and an alphabet soup of blood tests are all unable to confirm the presence of this cancer--until it gets big enough to be detected and by then its generally too late.
The decision for further chemo will be made in a month. At that time, we'll be much better informed on the type of chemo, the efficacy in stopping this cancer and the length of the therapy. I'll keep you posted!
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