My mom's surgery is this Thursday

JMulkey said:

She hasn't been staged yet
Hi Carlene I have been following your posts on the trial you are on, with great hope for others later on, and hopefully including my mom, so first, let me say thank you for the sacrifices you are making right now on behalf of myself, my mom and so many other women.

Mom hasn't been staged yet. But they know it is in the abdomen, because she had such awful ascites. She had to be drained twice before she ever started chemo, it was horrible, she looked way past 9 months pregnant, and could not breathe or eat at all. The doctor is a gyn/onc. And from what we've been told from her regular onc, her regular doctor, my breast surgeon (who I went to see and ask in person), and several other surgeons we know, that he is truly the best in this part of the state. So I'm fairly confused. He did say he would remove the omentum if he could (the problem here is going to be because of breathing difficulties with my mom on anesthesia, as she already has a problem with oxygen levels). So I'm thinking maybe he's saying that because he's not sure just how much time he's going to have in surgery with her? I don't know. And she won't wait now, she's all set to go tomorrow and she has alot of trust in this doctor already.

We are hoping and praying for remission.

Well, surgery didn't go as we had hoped
They removed one large tumor, but had to leave two. They were both attached to her colon and the surgeon said she would have been left with a colostomy, because he would have had to remove the colon. And it was his opinion that at this point it would not extend her life So, back to the oncologist to see if there's anything else they can do. This really sucks!

denyingarea said:

Jenny - thoughts for after surgery
Jenny,
I don't think I understand -- is this an initial diagnosis or a recurrence. Or, what is the reason her doctors are not hoping to extend her life?

During my mother's initial staging surgery, they were surprised by the amount of disease (Stage IV UPSC, which is treated just like Ovarian cancer). Docs decided to leave tumors wrapped around the colon for quality of life issues, but still planned to do carbo/taxol. (Ultimately, my mother unfortunately did have to get an emergency colostomy a few weeks later because the tumor caused the bowels to stop working, and they still had to leave the tumor because it was sharing blood supply with too much vital tissue.)

While 8 rounds of carbo/taxol have not been fully successful, and my mother still has residual cancer, it did shrink the amount of cancer by more than 900 centimeters. My mother had very little side affects from chemo and said he worst part was definitely recovering from the surgeries.

I very much hope there is a chemo treatment your medical oncologist is willing to try for your mother and that it knocks those tumors out with minimal impact on her enjoyment.

The surgeon has said all along that it wasn't a matter
of life extension, but he was doing the hysterectomy so that there wouldn't be excessive bleeding from the uterus later on. So I have no idea where he's coming from and no idea what her original oncologist is going to think about all of this. Mom had six rounds of taxol/carbo and it brought her CA 125 from 770 down to under 21. But still that cancer was there, so I'm confused. I don't understand why the CA 125 was so low if there was so much cancer. I'm hoping htere is more chemo she can do, and that since they now know (they really couldn't see well in the CT because they would not use the contrast due to what they thought was kidney failure, her creatinine was at 2.2, but had gone down to 1.2) where the tumors are, if something else can be done other than chemo, if they can do radiation, or what. I have to say, I've had cancer, had chemo, and am now four years out, mine was breast cancer. But my onc was so much clearer on exactly what was going on. The surgeon also has an opinion on what kind of cancer it is. He says it's definitely uterine. The oncologist has said all along that they tested the ascites, and also tested when she had her gall bladder taken out and it came back as adenocarcinoma and it was ovarian not uterine....so they seem to be disagreeing even on what kind of cancer it is.

She's 78, diabetic and has had one heart attack and her kidneys evidently aren't doing great, but they are certainly doing better. I'm very disappointed that they couldn't get more of the tumors during surgery. I'm starting to wonder if the surgeon just didn't want to mess with it...a terrible thing to say I know, but who knows.

Oh,this is an initial diagnosis. They couldn't do surgery at first because her ascites was so bad that the surgeon refused to operate until it was better.