Burn tumor, burn

I met Dr. Skrtic this afternoon.  No, that is not a typo. His last name simply lacks enough vowels for a proper two syllable word.  It's pronounced "Sker-tic".  Dr. Skrtic is an Intervention Radiologist.  He gets called in to do the highly skilled procedures that involve visualizing beneath the skin using ultra-sound equipment, X-rays and CT scans. 

I first sat down with a Physician's Assistant named Brad whom I also liked. In my limited experience I've found Physicians Assistants to be both knowledgeable and and good communicators and they seem to be less in a hurry to escape a barrage of questions.  Brad fit this description and did a good job of making me feel like I was being heard.  We talked about my past experiences with liver biopsies and the challenges of getting to a spot resting on top of a liver.  He told me that Dr. Skrtic was just finishing a procedure and he would be with me shortly.

It wasn't long before Dr. Skrtic arrived.  I liked him right away. He was also a great communicator and did not seem impatient.  I really liked that he conveyed how much he enjoys the trickier, more challenging procedures and that he was very interested in working on my case.  It had been presented to him at "Tumor Board", a regular meeting of oncologists who go over interesting cases together to share ideas about what would work best.

He did say that most often the metastasized cancers that migrate from other areas typically come from colon cancer and that esophageal cancer is much rarer in the liver.  In fact, there were no statistics about how effective this procedure would be for this type of cancer but in other ways it was a perfect case to apply this treatment.  My tumor is 23mm and the maximum treatable size for ablation is 30mm (3cm).  And it is just in the one spot and I am otherwise in excellent health.  Ablation effectively kills all the living cells in a 3cm sphere and thus, all the visually active cancer cells identified as thriving inside my body.  I have often visualized wanting to be able to do just that; fry the little sucker. If I understood him correctly, it uses radio waves to heat up tissue to just over 100 degrees, making a little localized "fever" that engages my immune system to kick into gear and cut off the blood supply to this area. I'll be left with some scar tissue on the organ but a liver is robust enough to handle it.

Brad came back with a "surgery" date of next week Tuesday, the 29th at 10:0am.  They want to treat me soon so the tumor does not grow to exceed the 3cm limit.  It takes an hour and then they'll watch me for most of the day to make sure there is no bleeding (there are lots of blood vessels in a liver) and then send me home to chill for a couple of days. 

I'm very excited about this approach.  No guarantee of success but it just feels right... and is much more palatable than another round of chemo.