Cancer Journal - Wednesday June 26th - Meeting with UCHealth’s Oncology Team


I met with the oncology team at University Hospital with Dr. McCarter. It was a thorough meeting that began at 10am with a consultation with the staff and blood work in the lab. After lunch, the multidisciplinary team meets and makes a recommendation. One funny element of the morning session is that one of the interns was taking down some information and she asked for clarification if my partner was a man named Chris or a woman named Christine. We got that “straightened” out, so to speak.

After lunch, I met with Dr. McCarter. He verified most of what I had heard before. No evidence from the cat scan of spread to any other organs. In the surgery, they will remove the lower colon (sigmoid) and a sampling of lymph nodes to examine for cancer cells. They should know about the lymph nodes within a few days (and since then, I have found that it is possible that they will even take a look under the microscope immediately in surgery). No need to rush to surgery as the outcome is likely to be the same three months ago or three months from now. He recommended a laparoscopic surgery because the recovery time is shorter even though there is still a need for a larger incision to pull the resected portion of the colon out.

After meeting with Dr. McCarter, I talked to the scheduler who initially set August 8th as the day for surgery. After thinking about it, I decided that, as long as we were waiting that long, we might as well wait until Thursday August 15th which is the weekend before the kids start school. That way, the kids won’t be held hostage to my immobility in the first week after surgery. We will have to figure out getting the kids to and from school that week but that’s different from having to figure out what to do with the kids for the whole week if they were not in school. I am also scheduled for a colonoscopy on the Wednesday beforehand that will use a pediatric scope, if necessary, to see further into the colon and try to get past the obstruction.

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