Once he came in we got the great news that it has shrunk way more than expected! Now there is still a mass there but it shrunk in a way that it is no longer touching his heart which is so important for surgery. Our surgeon is so happy with the results and the surgery may even be less invasive and will be done at our local hospital now rather than needing to travel for surgery. This is HUGE for us. This surgery is still going to be quite a doozey but the fact that we no longer need to have the bypass team on call and don’t have to mess with the heart increases the success rate of this surgery big time. Plus, given the size of the tumor the surgeon will try to make fewer, less invasive, incisions to get this out. If he is able to do so it will dramatically improve his recovery time. However we won’t know that until they are actually in surgery.
Then we met with our oncologist who was equally excited for us and walked us through all of the actual scans and size reduction. Then, we went over what Tom can and cannot do and one of the best parts of his day was finding out he could eat sushi again – yes, totally crazy, but something Tom was eager to have again and has been craving. So we are celebrating tonight with some sushi for dinner for him. It’s the little things!
We were honestly both in shock today – it feels like all the sleepless nights, pain, nausea, and emotions have actually all been for something. We still have to process this all – but we both have smiles on our faces today :)
So while we had great news today we won’t really know our status until after surgery. While the tumor has shrunk – it doesn’t necessarily mean there is no active cancer. Two things can happen after surgery:
- They remove and inspect the tumor and determine that there is no active cancer and he is considered cancer free. If this happens then all we have left is the surgery recovery.
- They remove and inspect the tumor and find active cancer cells and then, unfortunately, we would have two more rounds of chemo
Surgery will be on January 19th – this is for several reasons – the most important of which is that Tom’s body needs to recover as much as possible before surgery so he can handle recovery. More to come this week as we continue to figure things out and process it all. But, we must say thank you to everyone for all the prayers, good energy and love that have been sent our way – we know for sure that we could not have gotten this far without everyone’s love and support. I don’t even know what else to say today…so more to come tomorrow…