Friends and Family,
About a month ago it became extremely difficult to get food down. Each new bite felt like my stomach was going to explode. We scrambled for three weeks to get the right professional involved before some great accidental timing helped out. I had a routine CT scan last week, which showed that the bile ducts connecting the gall bladder, the liver, and the pancreas to my stomach were swollen. That news bought me a quick trip to the hospital, where a procedure was done to unblock the ducts and put in a stint to keep them clear. That’s where the good news ends.
Today we met with Dr. Sanborn to discuss the biopsy results and find out what was causing the block. The news is not what we were hoping for: Lung cancer has metastasized to the inner lining of my bile ducts.
This cancer can’t be surgically removed, and it can’t be treated with radiation. Since it happened while I have been on patritumab duruxtecan, staying on that drug wouldn’t help. And I don’t qualify for any clinical trials, both because my liver is no longer functioning well enough and because there is no way to measure growth or shrinkage of the cancer in that area. In short, I am out of treatment options.
Within the next few days, I will be enrolled in hospice, which means that I am expected to live for less than six months. I will be on meds for pain and nausea to keep me comfortable, but nothing to treat the cancer.
I have been extremely fortunate to still be alive almost eighteen years after I was first diagnosed, and I remain grateful for that. Having the support of you, my family and friends, has made an extremely challenging disease a great deal easier to cope with. And I would not still be here now if not for the incredible love and support that Genevieve has provided. I have been blessed with all the key ingredients to make not only surviving, but thriving, actually possible.
I truly appreciate all the calls, emails, texts, visits, and Facebook comments that you all send to me, but forgive me if I don’t respond to what I have shared with you today. I’m too overwhelmed to do anything more at this time.
Love,
Dann
