GAILSUSAN
My husband, Bill, had been having indigestion since mid-December 2009. On
February 26 (his 71st birthday), he finally visited his doctor as he had been
rapidly losing weight and had jaundice. He was admitted to the ER that
evening and had a CT scan, which showed a mass on his pancreas. Bill was then
admitted into the hospital at Yale New Haven for 6 days, during which he had
an ERCP for insertion of a stent to open up the bile duct.
He had lost over 20 lbs. of muscle by the time he left the hospital and was
very weak. He began to gain weight and feeling better once he started taking
pancreatic enzymes. He was told that he couldn't start chemo until his
bilyrubin levels came down to 2.0 (they were still very high). His medical
oncologist plans to start him on GemOx.
We have not been told the cancer staging, but I'm assuming it is IIB as it is
localized, but currently inoperable as the tumor surrounds the SMV 180
degrees along a long section of it. The surgeon, Dr. Ronald Salem, said that
he recently did a successful operation on someone with almost exactly the
same situation, whose tumor shrank enough to enable him to operate.
I have been caring for my 91 y.o. dad and 97 y.o. mom for a number of years
although they are now in a nursing home nearby. I'm an only child, no family
other than the three people who I'm now caring for - my mom, my dad, and my
husband. I'm self-employed full-time as a real estate agent and semi-retired
as an organizational psychologist. I have my Ph.D. in Organizational
Psychology from Columbia University.
Posted 03/29/2010 11:25 pm by GAILSUSAN
E-mail Address: wjpinc@optonline.net
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