palmerpink

Bit by bit, day by day, my big appointment draws nearer. I'm going up to Philly on Friday to see some specialists, two of the best available, and find out exactly what's coming next. Surgery? Surveillance? Chemo? As I've said before, most likely it'll be surgery. The big scary one. With the slicing my whole belly open and lifting of organs and snipping out of a dozen little lymph nodes all nestled up against my aorta and vena cava. Yeah, that one. From what I'm seeing, if we go that route I'll probably be off from work for as few as two or as many as three months, more likely the three. I should be okay though; as I said these are two of the best guys around. So of course what's actually  worrying me is far more...trivial. I'm trying to coordinate with my current urologist's office to send all the reports and results and other records they have for me up to the Philly guys. I'm worried things are going to be left out and we'll waste ti...

In all likelihood, I'll need a second, more complicated surgery before this is done. I'm not entirely sure why I haven't bothered to post about this yet, but it's been on my mind all the same. Essentially, the tumor was a non-seminoma germ cell tumor, specifically embryonal carcinoma. This more aggressive half of the ball cancer family still follows a predictable route--through a sequence of lymph nodes up the torso to the lungs, liver, brain, and beyond. Because this sequence is so predictable and because this kind of germ cell tumor resists chemo, it is almost always treated with surgery. It's called retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. Cool, can't be that bad, yeah? Lymph nodes aren't so big or anything, just gotta cut out these couple and call it a day. Except. They run up the torso, so the incision goes from just below the chest to below the belly button. Big ass cuts up in here. They are also under  many of the organs of the body cavity, posi...