Sorry for the double post, but I thought I’d update my Mom’s situation, and felt it deserved it’s own space. It’s a bit long, and I actually left out a lot of activity. Feel free to skip, but if these stories convince anyone to get screened, it’s worth the effort typing it up. Also, it helps me to share a bit, so…
For those who don’t recall - she has stage 4 colon cancer, with mets in her liver. Oncologist said that studies have shown that removing the main tumor typically doesn’t improve prognosis, because things are already spread elsewhere, so we’ve been doing chemo/immunotherapy.
Beginning of July, we were at out regular infusion appointment. Mom had told me she was having some neck pain, but wasn’t concerned about it. I told her that she should let the doctor decide if it’s important, because cancer therapy can do all kinds of stuff. He agreed that it might be important - she has a port, and that can cause a blood clot. He ordered an ultrasound to rule that out. We scheduled it for the next morning, Tuesday.
About half an hour before I was planning to leave the house to pick Mom up, she called me. She said she was up all night throwing up and in pain. She was going to cancel the US appointment, and wanted me to take her to the ER instead. I was basically ready, so I left right away, picked her up, and took her to the ER.
They decided they needed to do a new CT scan and gave her the typical contrast stuff to drink. Mom struggled to get about a quarter of it down, and they eventually gave up, decided that’s what they were going to have to deal with, and did the CT. They found a complete blockage in her colon. It still isn’t clear if the tumor grew, shifted into a different position, the colon was inflamed making the space smaller, some food got trapped in the smaller space, or something else. In any case, they were going to look at surgical options.
In the mean time, they put an NG tube in to drain the remaining contrast fluid and anything else lying around. (For those blissfully unaware, that’s a tube down her nose into her stomach. It hooks up to a suction device with a collection bin.) She started getting IV nutrition. Thankfully they were able to use her port for some of the nutrition, because that gave them more options.
Wednesday morning, they told us they were recommending the removal of that part of the colon.
They hoped they would be able to reattach the ends, leaving her without an ostomy bag. The surgeon felt that her case had a good prognosis for that - the most likely reason they couldn’t reattach cleanly would be if the colon/tumor had attached to the abdominal wall, and they had multiple scans showing things moving around still.
They hoped to do it on Wednesday, because Thursday was the 4th of July, and staffing gets harder. They were perfectly willing to do it whenever it made sense, but if Mom was stable enough to handle it Wednesday and the NG tube had pretty much finished it’s job, that would be the best case. Things worked out, and Wednesday evening around 6pm they took her for surgery.
About 8:30, I got the call that surgery was successful. No ostomy bag. I got to see Mom briefly in recovery, but she was very drugged up, and they advised me to go home and get some sleep, since that’s all Mom was going to be doing.
She stayed in the hospital for about a week after that. Got back on solid foods slowly, and given PT to help her get out of bed and back to walking.
They biopsied the removed tumor. It showed two cell types - neuroendocrine carcinoma and adenocarcinoma. We met with the oncologist this past Monday, and he said he thinks that’s really just the cancer progressing and looking, in his word, nasty. DNA testing showed the sampled sections had the same mutation her original tumor has, so it’s likely to be original tumor, and not new stuff. Her CT-DNA blood tests have been encouraging, and he still believes in that test. He ordered a new one, and we’ll have results in another week or so. He also said there aren’t really good “next line” treatments. And he’s always said that the stuff she’s on works really well, until it doesn’t. I was left with the overall impression that this is normal progression. She was given 12-18 months at the end of December, so this makes sense.
For now, we’re staying the course. Her birthday is at the end of this month, and we’re making plans for how to celebrate. And I’m hoping that we get to do Thanksgiving as a full family still.