Michelle, Mike and I went to Mike's doctor appointment on Tuesday morning. We met Dr. Mark Ott. He has great credentials and really made us feel comfortable, well as comfortable as possible when you are going to find out just how bad your cancer is. He asked Mike lots of questions about his health and about his family background. Not such a great family history. He poked and prodded and his question was, "what prompted our doctor to order a CT scan."` The cancer could have easily been misdiagnosed and treated as something else. I told him number one Dr. Allen listened to Mike seriously and number two he must have had a special awareness. He told us that the cancer is a stage 2 to 3 cancer. Now we have questions that can only be answered by having surgery.
The surgery is schedules for Aug. 29th and will be the second surgery scheduled that day. He will remove approximately 1/3 of the pancreas, the adrenal gland and the spleen. It is a tumor and whether cancer or pancreitis it has to be removed. He is 99% sure that it is pancreatic cancer. Dr. Ott ordered more blood work to define the tumor markers, (whatever that means) so that is done. He also said follow up chemo and radiation is a possibility. But that can be done here in Cedar City.
He also gave Mike a prescription for three shots to be done before Monday. HIB influenza, pneumonia and a meningitis shots. I called our health dept. they didn't have any except the pneumonia. After that I handed the job over to Michelle. She got us an appointment in St. George at their Health Dept. Don't ask me why no one is Cedar had a meningitis shot. The drawback is the shots won't be covered by medicare and they are very expensive. (stupid medicare) We can try and bill our secondary.
I hope and pray that medicare and our secondary will cover all of our expenses. But whatever we have to do we will do. We are optimistic and hopeful that we have caught the cancer in time and that Mike will make a full recovery. Please keep us in your prayers, Mike seems to hurt more each day and have less and less energy. I hate seeing him like this.
Love to you all Mom
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