(apologies for any obvious typos, or glaring errors as I dictated most of this on my phone 
)
A brief update on my health. For those of you who didn’t know, I was diagnosed with bile duct cancer back in August. I have endured about six weeks in hospital/nursing care since, including one 4 week stretch between Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, and a rural nursing care facility nearby, I’ve been home since mid October.
I’ve also endured two major surgeries, in addition numerous smaller procedures. The first major surgery was a partial liver resection, where they removed anywhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of my liver, Plus some rerouting of stuff in my abdomen so my body will function “normallyâ€Â. Several days after the first surgery, my temperature started skyrocketing, my blood pressure was off the charts and after some scans It was discovered that the work the surgeon had done, was failing, and where the work connected to my body had in the surgeon’s words disintegrated (which my surgeon had never seen in anyone who hadn’t endured a lot of chemo, which I haven’t yet). I had an emergency surgery to take care of this, and there was actually concern that I wouldn’t survive the surgery, or the next couple of days afterward. At least one surgeon on the team told me directly and after the fact that I was lucky to be alive. (there are, of course many more details of this, I really only scratched the surface)
Now the actual follow up:
At a monthly follow up appointment in December my surgeon had a reason to believe that my body had reconnected itself, which he, the chief of liver transplant surgery at Piedmont in Atlanta, had only seen/heard of once, and only in a child, certainly no one my age (38). He ordered some follow up blood work, and scans. We had the scans on Monday at a radiologist here in Athens and initial review indicated that it looked like the connection had indeed rebuilt itself. The surgeon called us on Thursday morning, and confirmed after further review that indeed the connection had remade itself. He was speechless, and had no scientific/medical explanation as to how this happened, much less in someone my age. My body is apparently healthy enough, even with the cancer, to be able to heal itself and pretty quickly too since we suspect it healed it self by the time I got home in mid October, a month after it disintegrated.
I still have a long road ahead of me with chemo, radiation, and whatever else to fight this cancer, but things like this week, are real encouraging for me that I can fight this.
)A brief update on my health. For those of you who didn’t know, I was diagnosed with bile duct cancer back in August. I have endured about six weeks in hospital/nursing care since, including one 4 week stretch between Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, and a rural nursing care facility nearby, I’ve been home since mid October.
I’ve also endured two major surgeries, in addition numerous smaller procedures. The first major surgery was a partial liver resection, where they removed anywhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of my liver, Plus some rerouting of stuff in my abdomen so my body will function “normallyâ€Â. Several days after the first surgery, my temperature started skyrocketing, my blood pressure was off the charts and after some scans It was discovered that the work the surgeon had done, was failing, and where the work connected to my body had in the surgeon’s words disintegrated (which my surgeon had never seen in anyone who hadn’t endured a lot of chemo, which I haven’t yet). I had an emergency surgery to take care of this, and there was actually concern that I wouldn’t survive the surgery, or the next couple of days afterward. At least one surgeon on the team told me directly and after the fact that I was lucky to be alive. (there are, of course many more details of this, I really only scratched the surface)
Now the actual follow up:
At a monthly follow up appointment in December my surgeon had a reason to believe that my body had reconnected itself, which he, the chief of liver transplant surgery at Piedmont in Atlanta, had only seen/heard of once, and only in a child, certainly no one my age (38). He ordered some follow up blood work, and scans. We had the scans on Monday at a radiologist here in Athens and initial review indicated that it looked like the connection had indeed rebuilt itself. The surgeon called us on Thursday morning, and confirmed after further review that indeed the connection had remade itself. He was speechless, and had no scientific/medical explanation as to how this happened, much less in someone my age. My body is apparently healthy enough, even with the cancer, to be able to heal itself and pretty quickly too since we suspect it healed it self by the time I got home in mid October, a month after it disintegrated.
I still have a long road ahead of me with chemo, radiation, and whatever else to fight this cancer, but things like this week, are real encouraging for me that I can fight this.
