Tuesday, April 09, 2013

In the Hospital

It's not a gallstone

As many of you already know, I was scheduled for a sonogram of my liver on Saturday morning. After the sonogram was and the doctor consulted with the technician, I was instructed to go for a CT scan right away at Medical Center of Plano, so Gail and I went and did that. Based on the results of both tests, I was admitted into the emergency room. We originally thought I had gallstones, and that a stone has escaped the gall bladder and lodged itself in the bile duct which is why I'm yellow and have no appetite.

On April 8, I had a procedure called ERCP to remove the blockage, and the next morning the plan was to remove the gall bladder (as there are more stones), thereby preventing this from happening again.

On April 9, they performed an endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) and found that the mass blocking the bile duct is a tumor and it's cancerous. The tumor is on the head of the pancreas and is putting enough pressure on the bile duct to cause jaundice. A plastic stent was placed in the bile duct to relieve the pressure and let things start flowing again.

I'll stay in the hospital for this week for observation and to meet with oncologists. To my knowledge, no one in my family has had cancer before so I'm unsure what to expect. Lots of unknown here.

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