Next Stop

Ooooohhhh kay... so here is the update I keep promising and not giving anyone. Apparently my surgery wasn't quite what they had hoped for. Upon going in they saw that my tumor is wrapped around my aorta near my heart and while it seems not to be anything doctors are terribly worried about for now- it DID prevent them from removing it. Instead, my surgeon removed a couple of large samples of the tumor to send off to the Mayo Clinic to have analyzed.

When I was in recovery in the hospital, they told me that they were unable to remove ALL of the tumor and that I would either have to come back (based on whatever my Oncologist decides) for another surgery or else to have Chemotherapy. They had also told me that my tumor was now being considered a Malignant Thymoma, rather than the benign version they had thought prior to my surgery.

By my post-op appointment that I had last Thursday they had my results back from the Mayo Clinic and my surgeon was quite pleased with them. He said that my tumor had proven to be a benign teratoma after all, which is apparently great news. We are moving forward with an appointment with my new Oncologist next week where we will discuss the next step- more likely than not it will be either Chemotherapy or else Radiation Therapy. Neither of these are my first choice but by now I just want to be better. In the mean time I am still taking all kinds of medications and taking it easy. Im not back at work for another two weeks which would be awesome except that I can't drive so it kind of puts a fun damper on things. Oh well!