Today was a good day.
The oncologists and surgeons at MSK were impressive, thoughtful, and positive. They feel like they’re close to having a plan in place for Gina. And they believe that Gina’s liver is resectable—something that seemed impossible just months ago!
Gina’s tumors are incredibly reduced in size, but there are still many of them in many different places in her liver. So, they’re going to need to “get creative” in how they operate.
The surgeons hoped that they could just remove a large section or two, but it looks like they’ll need to do one really big removal and then several small wedge resections and ablations. If it requires too much liver removal, they may just remove her gallbladder, shorten her colon, and install an HAI pump, and hold some or all of the liver resection to a second surgery after she’s had some chemo via the pump.
Either way, it looks likely that surgery will take place at MSK the week of March 25th.
Her liver surgeon said that the pump should give Gina “years and years and years and years.” His words—and I’m holding him to them.
I’ll share more details as I get them, but mostly we’re just enjoying sitting together on the flight back from New York, feeling like there’s more clarity, a better path ahead, and more hope than we’ve allowed ourselves since Gina’s diagnosis.
Thank you all for the thoughts, prayers, meals, and stars.
It’s working.
