Update on my dad- some good news!

My dad, age 64, was diagnosed with late Stage 2/early Stage 3 (the docs said it was hard to tell if it was stage 3 yet) Esophageal Cancer back in April of this year. He underwent six weeks of chemo/radiation at Beth Israel Hospital in NYC which he concluded in early June. The chemo definitely wiped him out and made him miserable, but now he is almost feeling like his old self again.

Yesterday, he went to see if the treatments had shrunk the tumor at all, and I just received the good news that the tumor has shrunken considerably and there is still no trace of the cancer having spread anywhere else in his body. His surgeon has scheduled his op for next Thursday, August 11th (so soon!). We are all nervous, but excited at the same time to get this horrible thing out of his body, hopefully for good. I received this email from friends who are housing my dad in NYC while he is getting tests done:

"Well, surgery is set for next Thursday, August 11 -- OMG! So soon! No, it was not necessarily the first choice, but after giving Nick several options, the surgeon's nurse practitioner called to say hey, this is the best date because other surgeons are laying claim to the OR. So it will give him less time to prepare, but also less time for anxiety. The surgeon, Martin Karpeh, explained the different surgical scenarios saying he can't know for sure which it will be until he gets the results of the endoscopy which Nick is having this Thursday morning (tomorrow or today depending when you read this). However, based on the earlier endoscopy he was pretty sure that he would cut the esophagus and move the stomach up to the chest -- it's weird but it made perfect sense as he explained it. There is a technical term for this surgery which I don't recall but I'm sure it's available online. (We discussed this with my breast surgeon who joined us for dinner tonight, and in his words humans are created with bodily redundancies and certain internal parts can get cut and/or moved around without it being a problem.)

Surgery can take up to six hours, and for the first few days after Nick will have an epidural (spinal) narcotic drip which will eliminate the pain without zonking him out. He will also have numerous tubes those first few days (oxygen, feeding, catheter, etc.), and like it or not he will be hauled out of bed the day after surgery. Expected hospital stay is seven to ten days. By the time of his discharge he will be eating by mouth and with time he should be able to eat pretty much everything (venison and head cheese here he comes), but due to the relocation and reduced size of the stomach he will need to eat small meals several times a day. Full recovery takes about six weeks."




The surgery sounds pretty involving and complex, which makes me nervous. But, my dad is in amazing health, so I am hoping there will be no complications. -fingers crossed-

I will post again post-op with (hopefully) more good news.