Part 10 ~ The Next Phase: Giants
August 2016
The week after my birthday was another series of doctor appointments: follow-ups from my stay in the hospital, and our first visit to Dr. Sardi at Mercy Medical Center in Maryland. From the time of my surgery, all of my doctors had told me that Dr. Sardi was the best and the guy we should see.
We went in for our consultation, figuring that Drs. M. & S. had gotten all they could surgically and all I would need was HIPEC. WRONG! I would need another surgery to cytoreduce prior to the HIPEC in the same surgery. After the physical examination, we were led into his office to discuss how this was all going to play out.
HIPEC (Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy) is done in conjunction with cytoreductive surgery. They go in and get rid of any diseased tissues and organs, and then lay catheters in your abdomen, temporarily suture you up, and pump heated chemo drugs into your abdomen for 90 minutes while moving your body around so that it fills every nook and cranny that may possibly have cancer cells. Then they pump the chemo drugs back out, remove the temporary sutures, remove the catheters, and finish any other parts of the surgery they need to before closing you up.
Dr. Sardi showed us a chart and told us that I was in the low end of the mid-range for the HIPEC to be successful. He showed us these medical journals with photos of what your internal organs and tissues are supposed to look like vs what they look like diseased. I wanted no part of looking at those pictures. I was already dreading another invasive surgery with a longer incision (where they cut you from stem to stern). I was panicking. Dr. Sardi is a straight shooter. He told us upfront that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to help me. He tells you how it is whether you want to hear it or not. I admire that in a doctor! He saw that I didn’t want to look and he turned to me and basically told me I needed to look and get on board if I wanted to live. He told me that my attitude was everything if I wanted to get thru this.
He told me that I would need to be put on systemic FOLFOX chemo for about 3 cycles prior to surgery in hopes that this would help. Part way thru he would do a laparoscopic incision to see what he was up against and then after my chemo we would schedule surgery – if I was a good candidate. Dr. M. described the need for systemic chemo to me like this: cancer is like a really big patch of weeds and Dr. Sardi will use the FOLFOX as a weed spray to kill some of the weeds and then the further cytoreduction and HIPEC to clear all the weeds away. HIPEC has only been around since sometime in the 1980’s. That may sound like a while, but it’s not. It is still considered experimental in some places. There are only a few doctors around who do it and do it well. I believe Dr. Sardi and his team do about 2 of these surgeries a week with people from all over the world coming in for treatment. See animation video: https://youtu.be/l65xOD7nPbc.
By the end of the appointment, I was on board! I had to be! I think I went thru all the stages of grief in that visit. I called my mom before we left for home and filled her in. I was laughing with her by the end of the call. We went home and filled Mary in. We didn’t tell Bean yet that I would have to have another surgery, but that I had to go for medicine to help me get better.
Have you ever faced a Giant? Something big that you weren’t sure you could get thru or survive? In the story of David and Goliath, David took down Goliath the Giant with a slingshot and a stone. He did this with God’s help when even an army couldn’t defeat the Giant. Cancer was my Giant. Dr. Sardi, his team, and HIPEC were my David armed with his slingshot. As much as I didn’t want to have this done, I had to face it. I was not relying on my own strength, but on God’s and His work that would be done thru this team and procedure. Get to know your Giant. Learn about it and what makes it tick. Every Giant has a weakness and God knows what that is. He can help you take it down today! Read 1 Samuel 17 for the full story on David and Goliath!
Warning: Undefined variable $user_ID in /home2/stitchq1/public_html/wp-content/themes/kallyas/comments.php on line 73
You must be logged in to post a comment.