Day 218, Year 9: Meeting with Mark’s Doctors at Mass General
Date: Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Weather: Partly Cloudy Morning, Overcast Afternoon, Windy
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, Massachusetts
The short story . . . Mark’s new surgeon, Dr. Cristina Ferrone, along with Dr. Kwak, Mark’s oncologist, and Dr. Hong, Mark’s radiation oncologist, are all in agreement that Dr. Ferrone will attempt a resection (removal of the cancerous mass) through traditional open surgery immediately followed by a dose of radiation to the area to kill any remaining cancerous cells. If removing the mass doesn’t look possible once Dr. Ferrone is inside and can see the actual location in relation to vital organs and veins, she will switch to a procedure called nanoknife. This is the insertion of rods that look like long toothpicks into the cancerous mass and then an electrical charge of some sort is sent through those rods into the mass. This is called the irreversible electroporation of the cells (IRE) and it literally blows holes in the cell walls so the contents leak out and the cells die. This is the new procedure the doctors have been talking about and it has a very high success rate. It is only used when there is a cancerous mass that can’t be reached by traditional means, but it sounds very promising as a future cancer treatment. Unlike ablation procedures that ‘freeze’ or ‘fry’ cells, this procedure does not harm any of the surrounding area. Anyway, the operation will happen as soon as the operation room that can accommodate all of this technology is available and we should find out the date tomorrow. Whew!
Now for the longer story. We now know why meditation is pushed as an important part of fighting cancer. You need to meditate in order to survive the long waits. We have waited three weeks to finally get today’s meeting scheduled and once we arrived, we had to wait almost two and a half hours to get the three physicians together. And even then the referring surgeon, Dr. Sylla, could not attend the meeting. We have been in the offices of the two oncologists and know how very busy they are all the time. And add to that unexpected issues where one gets delayed for a bit, so then the other takes another patient while waiting and gets delayed, and it goes on and on. We understand and accept the delays, but it can be frustrating. Just meditate! But once everyone was in one room, things moved pretty fast. We first heard that traditional surgery was being recommended by Dr. Ferrone even though we had been told that it was too risky. She explained that indeed it does look risky on the scan, but that often once she gets inside it can look quite different and might really be possible. This will not be done laproscopically. So whether the mass is removed or the nanoknife procedure is done, there will be about a 4 to 5 inch incision, a 2 to 7 day hospital stay and a 5 week recovery period. During that time Mark can work, but he can do no heavy lifting. I’m convinced he won’t be able to live on the boat out here on a mooring because of the difficulty of getting onto the boat from the dinghy, but he is sure that he will be fine. He has an appointment with his primary care physician tomorrow and maybe she can help answer that question as we didn’t think to ask the doctors today. Somehow we’ll figure it out. And once we know when the operation will happen, we will start dealing with the scheduling details. I explained to Dr. Ferrone that there is a 5 day period when our daughter Heather is out of town and I have to be here to help take care of the boys. Her response was that this operation needs to happen sooner rather than later and that hopefully it can be done before Heather is out of town. But if the times overlap, she assured me that there are 10,000 people at Mass General to take care of Mark and that he would probably be better off without me there to keep him from resting. She’s probably right, but that will be difficult for me. She saw the look in my eyes and said, “You can use lots of ‘face’ time to communicate.” I guess I’d better get a Facebook account of my own.
As we were all leaving, Dr. Kwak looked at Mark and said, “In my mind we are still working on a cure here.” Mark replied, “I like the way your mind thinks.” She went on to remind us that there can always be more cancer cells that are in the body and just not detectable at this point, but getting rid of what we know is there is a great first step. We are hopeful.
