Experience with Virginia Piper Cancer Center

I don't know anything about the mentioned cancer center but I know Mayo is ranked in the top 5 centers for EC. You want to work closely with a center that routinely works with EC especially if surgery is being offered. Personally I have worked with a local oncology center for radiation and chemo treatments. While they only see one or two cases a year they are following standard protocol and I have had second opinions from the UNiversity of Iowa confirming the selected protocol. You want to make sure if surgery is considered you go with a location and a surgeon that performs this surgery frequently. For me it was the UNiversity of Iowa where they performs esophgetomy surgery several times a month. When dignosed in March of 2012, I was staged as t3 with 7 lymph nodes involved. After my initial chemo, radiation and surgery, it appeared that we had eliminated the cancer, however 3 months later it reappeared in distant lymph nodes so I was restaged to 4 and started treatments again. I am hoping for good news with my May pet scan. If not I will be going up to Mayo to see what they recommend for moving forward. I want to be the one out of 4 to survived past 5 years after diagnosis.

I hope your first round of chemo went well today.  You might want to chat with your dr if you would benefit from having a port put in. My first 6 rounds of chemo were done by IV. When we had to start again I had a port installed to make it easier.