Upcoming Surgery - Aug 6
This week I spent a lot of time at Mayo Clinic, undergoing various scans and tests in preparation for the upcoming surgery for my liver and lungs, scheduled on August 6.
After reviewing my MRI and CT scans taken earlier this month, my liver surgeon determined she could perform a resection to remove the last two lesions in the right side of my liver. She'll use the same incision point from my surgery in January, to open my abdominal region up. To ensure the lesions and an appropriately-sized margin is removed, my surgeon will remove about 40% of my liver.
Kelley and I also met with a thoracic surgeon to hear her plan for handling the inactive nodules on my lungs. Previously up to 5 nodules had been reported in various scans. This month's CT and MRI scans showed one nodule on the right lung that had shrunk from 20mm down to 6mm on the right lung. The other nodules previously reported were imperceptible, with the exception of a 3mm nodule on the surface of my left lung. At the same time as my liver surgery, my lung surgeon will use a wedge resection to remove the 6mm nodule.
The surgery will take approximately 4-5 hours total. After which, in theory, my body will be cancer-free! It isn't clear yet what treatments and monitoring will be required after this surgery. There have been differing opinions held by my surgical team at Mayo Clinic and my oncology team at Ironwood Cancer & Research Center. The surgeon's thought is that further chemo would be unnecessary and would damage my liver more than help it; however, my oncologist thinks we should maintain a regimen of chemotherapy to prevent any new growths from occuring. Not knowing how to proceed, Kelley and I figured we would wait to make that decision after we learn all we can from next week's surgery. Please pray for wisdom & clarity in how to proceed.
Recovery time looks like it may require a 3-5 day hospital stay. We were told to expect the incisions to heal within a couple weeks, but I may experience some nerve pain near my ribcage from the incisions and work needed to treat my right lung, will take at least one full month to heal. The missing portion of my liver should grow back within a couple months. It's truly amazing how God designed the human body to adapt and compensate for missing organs to maintain critical functions.
The Lord continues to show us how He is working to lay down a path toward full physical healing and recovery. It is obvious that this journey is not just about finding the right combination of doctor visits, surgeries and drug therapies. Rather, this experience has proven how important it is to build intentional relationships with the people whose paths the Lord chooses to cross with our own.
Throughout our experiences in meeting with the surgical team at Mayo and working with various Mayo staff and processes, we are very confident the Lord has connected us with the right people at the right time. We tried so hard to get a referral into Mayo back in the Fall of 2024 and again this past Spring. But this summer, once the possibility of leveraging resection surgery became a reality, new connections were made to enable us, this time, to benefit from being in the care of Mayo's experts.
I am convinced that all the healing I am experiencing is made possible by the healing power of Christ, bolstered by all the love, prayers, and support of our friends and family. Throughout 32+ years of marrige, we have been surrounded by amazing circles of neighbors; friends from high school, college, several churches across the nation, swim teams, theatre groups, homeschooling co-ops, and of course our families. But then amazingly, each of those circles expanded as myriads of their friends and families jumped in, as well, with all of their prayers and support.
For example, my cousin's church near Kansas City sent us a beautiful prayer quilt, where each person from their congregation who helped make the quilt tied a knot on it, signifying their commitment to faithfully pray for us.
We are sincerely grateful for how many people generously helped us pay for the heavy influx of medical expenses over the past 11 months; or helped us with meals, transportation to/from doctor appointments; talking with me over the phone, over lunch, or on our back patio; stepping in to help with home repairs I could no longer do myself (e.g. replacing burnt-out recessed lights and smoke detectors in our valuted ceiling, resetting our drip system, and taking time to make our front/back yard look beautiful). So many of you who subscribed to this blog have blessed us with each of your comments at the end of these posts, or with cards in the mail, messages over facebook, instagram, or text message.
I hope everyone reading this post is able to catch onto how important and effective everyone's prayers have been to bring us to this point. We've gone from being told I only had a few months to live, to now being within a week of living cancer-free.
What an amazing moment to be alive!
We are so thankful the Lord chose to cross our paths with each of you. Thank you for sticking with us on this journey. We couldn't do this without you.
~Bryan