Topic: Time for my experience and help
Hi everybody from Spain;
First of all congratulations for this site and sorry for my english. For me it has been very useful from the last august and now it´s time to describe my experience.
My mom is 74 years old very healthy and strong woman without any health problems during her life before this. She has had a very aggressive surgery on October 13th to remove a klatskin tumor type IIIb for 8 hours. To achieve this the surgeon had to remove liver left side and rebuild some artery/vain. As doctor said portal vain and artery were involved. He could remove all “macroscopic” tumor. The bad thing is that he had to remove two positive lymph nodes too and for this reason the prognosis was not good in long term.
Anyway, let me explain you from the beginning:
After a routinely blood test as every year in the last January APL/APT/GGT parameters appeared extremely high (10 times). Her personal doctor told her for another test 3 month later (now, in perspective, I can´t understand this gap). In this second test (May) decreased just a little bit. Then in June she had a ultrasound scan where they saw a bile duct dilatation. One month later she had an scanner and when we went for the results radiologist told us that it was possible that the hipodense damage found ( 25x25 mm) could be cholangiocarcinoma.
After this they sent to her to the general hospital in our city (Bilbao, basque counry) to the hepatobiliary surgery department. There, doctors did her some additional tests during next month (august, September), ultrasound endoscopy , MRI and another scanner in order to a possible surgery. Here they saw some possible vascular invasion. All of this while she did a normal life without any symptoms at all.
But at the same time I had knowledge, from another big hospital 50 km far away, that they had more experience in this disease(liver transplant…)Finally we decided to go there for surgery taking with us all tests and images. In fact surgeon told us that this surgery couldn´t have been done in the first hospital. I said goodbye to my mom at 9 o’clock in the surgery area door and at 12 o´clock surgeon stopped to inform us that he found more than expected from images. He told us that there were two possibilities (I´ll never forget these minutes)
1-Finish surgery without any action and in 48 hours at home. Time left between 6 months and one year.
2-Go on with surgery trying to remove all the tumor but with some risks because vascular invasion and because of two positive lymph nodes maybe prognosis was not different from the first choice but if it was ok always is better election.
We told him for second option and god bless him and at 17 o´clock he told us that what he wants to do he did it.
After some new blood test, ultrasound and scan in the following days last Thursday she returned home until JUST nine days. Doctor told me that because of good evolution it was better continue with the recovery at home.
Now she try to do something but in few minutes she feel tired and prefers to stay in bed. Despite taking a painkiller pillow every 8 hours she has pain in the surgery area and for this reason she can´t sleep and nights make it very long. In addition she begins to feel sad and depressive seeing the impossibility of returning to a normal life at least for now.Not much appetite either
So, I´d like to know your opinion and ask for advices in this situation.
Thank you very much for your help;
Carlos
