Following on from my last post, lets continue the story of those first two weeks. Every day I had an appointment for one thing or another. This post will be an overview of the procedures and tests, I will add other posts to go into details of some of it to help answer any questions anyone has on the specifics.
Liver Biopsy
There’s a dedicated post to this procedure here, however read with caution, it includes details some may find upsetting.
Liver Biopsy was done under local anaesthetic and very light sedation. You’re taken to the CT Scanner and given a IV of a very light sedative. The doctor showed me the tool they use to take the sample and explained I’ll hear a loud click when they use it.
Sadly this procedure was another traumatic experience for me, resulting in a lot of pain and tears, you can read the full story for details if you’re curious!
The Results
24/08/2017
The day my life literally changed forever. Nothing would be the same after this day. I’m going to go in to more details about the emotions that go along with a cancer diagnosis in a dedicated post, so this will just be a factual account of what happened that morning.
I first knew something was going on when two doctors and a nurse all came in to my room together and stood at the end of the bed. (two doctors because one was handling my case and the other spoke English).
He told me they had the initial results of the biopsy and it was confirmed to be an adenocarcinoma, most likely started in my colon, so I need a colonoscopy
Heart Scan
The chemo I was due to start, “5-FU” is known to put strain on your heart so I needed to have an ultrasound of my heart before we were able to start the treatment. Thankfully this was a simple, painless, ultrasound and I was even able to see my heart working away! Everything was fine in this department and the doctor even said my heart was “very strong” (probably the only two words I understood through the whole procedure!)
Colonoscopy
There is a dedicated post to Colonoscopies here, since it’s a big part of Colorectal cancer treatment. I go into a lot more detail about the whole process there.
So this is my first colonoscopy experience, and the grand age of 32 years old.. Honestly I did not expect to be having cameras shoved up my backside this early in life!
I took it in my stride though. Hearing you have cancer makes everything else seem quite insignificant, plus, remember this week was full of Xanax fueled laid back attitude!
I Was due to be put to sleep for the procedure however due to issues with the preparation it was decided that there was no point and we would just go a “little way in.” It’s not the nicest feeling as I’m sure you can imagine, but it’s not “Painful” (Keeping in mind we really did only go a little way in though)
This is where the real confusion and language issues started. The doctor told me he couldn’t see any cancer, just some polyps but no cancer. So at this point I think ok that’s great, I have liver cancer but it’s not spread! That’s better than having colon cancer that has spread! (At this point I didn’t understand the specifics of where my tumors were and how much colon he didn’t see)
PET Scan
(“TEP scanner” in french!)
The PET Scanner itself. inside the tunnel is quite spacious, I didn’t find it claustrophobic at all and you spend most of the time with your head out the other end anyway!
“Positron Emission Tomography” (Sounds fancy right?) Basically its a scan that uses radioactive isotopes to show where active and “hungry” cells are in the body. (I go into more detail about this in my scans post here)
So my first experience with the TEP scanner was on the 30/08/2017. The details I was given told me that the scan would take about 2 hours (Initially this terrified me until I learned that you’re only IN the scanner for about 20 minutes). In my hospital the scanner was located in the Nuclear Medicine department, which I found really cool. It’s like going into a nuclear bunker!
My Boyfriend wasn’t allowed in with me, he couldn’t even come into the waiting room with me, so we arranged to meet in the hospital cafe in around 2 hours. The procedure basically involves a radioactive glucose solution pumped into you through an IV, you have to them rest for 45 minutes to let your body absorb the sugar solution. Then you’re taken to the scanner and you have to lay still for about 20 minutes while they scan your body. It’s all fairly straight forward and most people don’t feel anything from the IVs.
Being infused with radioactive glucose, the machine you see here is where they keep the isotopes, it has controls on the other side for the nurses to use behind the safety screen.
Gynecologist
Since we didn’t know what the Chemotherapy would do to my eggs we were sent to see a specialist in Paris to determine whether I would need to freeze any before we started, she told us that the particular drugs they wanted to give me would only give me temporary infertility, once I stopped taking the chemo, my eggs would grow again and everything would be fine.
I’ve since changed chemo drugs 5/6 times so as of right now I’ve no idea what works down there!
PAC Surgery
“PAC” Is what the french call the implanted catheter port I have installed in my chest. Chemotherapy drugs are usually acidic and are too strong for the small veins in your arms to cope with, you can end up with internal chemical burns if you take too much through those small veins so most of us are given central lines which are long catheters that are placed in a large vein going to our hearts.
This was the first surgery I had to have and it was done under a local anaesthetic, x-ray guided. The surgeon spoke reasonable English thankfully and explained what he was doing step by step. I didn’t feel anything, as soon as I did he added more anaesthetic to the area and we were good to continue! The surgery didn’t take long at all, maybe 30 minutes. In total we were in and out of the hospital in about 2 hours.
I had a very good surgeon who managed to implant the whole thing with just one incision, most people need two incisions, one for the port placement and another to guide the catheter into the vein. There was very little pain afterwards, my shoulder was a little sore for a few days and it took a couple of weeks to get used to feeling something there.
So, all in all a very busy two weeks! By this time I had gotten over a lot of the shock of the diagnosis and was ready to get fighting, I was almost looking forward to starting chemo! At least it meant I was trying to do something about this evil disease.
My next chronological post will be all about that first chemotherapy session. However I will post some informative entries first to cover the areas in this post that are missing.
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