Or as I intend to call it, “Four hours waiting in a cold, windowless room.”

Because we truly waited for 4 hours. For a 15-minute appointment with the surgeon.

GAH.

Look, we’re pretty patient people. But it is truly torture to put a cancer patient with cold sensitivity into a freezing cold room and make them wait it out for FOUR HOURS before telling them whether or not you can actually save their life.

Because those are the stakes. Getting the cancer out is really important. And until today, we didn’t know if that was even a possibility.

Aaaand the good news is, for the liver at least, it is a straightforward robotic surgery that will likely be performed after chemo is complete. They know where the spot is, they know it is shrinking, and can snatch it out “easily.”

So, that’s awesome.

We will meet with the other surgeon on March 1, and they will discuss options for the lungs. One new piece of information that just made sense today is that if the lesions on his lungs get too small, they will be hard to see/remove. And cancer is a sneaky bugger – if there’s even one cell there, it can grow.

So we’re pretty much in the same place we were before, we just know that one more part of the treatment plan will work.

To sum up:

Step 1 – remove large main tumor and surrounding lymph nodes. Margins were clean, and only 1 lymph node had cancer. (that’s good – means there weren’t tons of them just spraying cancer all around.) DONE

Step 2 – systemic chemo – 12 treatments of FOLFOX + Avastin. Completed 7/12 and we know it’s working

Step 3 – removal/laser ablation of tumors in lungs (of which there are 4 teeeeeeny tiny ones) We will find out whether it is possible on March 1st.

Step 4 – The “easy” part – removal of the tumor on his liver. (Did you know you could surgically remove 2/3 of your liver and be totally fine? There’s your fun fact for the day.)

Outcome – hypothetically, “no evidence of disease” which as close as they’ll get to saying “cure” in our world.

Next time we have a doctor’s appointment at UNC, I’m bringing a cooler full of beer and snacks and a heated blanket.