Duke University--Trip #1

First, THANK YOU, each one and every one, for your loving thoughts and prayers for us. We are truly feeling the effects! Bill probably never knew how loved he was until now, through you! It's SUCH a comfort. Thank you, thank you.

Duke Trip Number 1

It was a 12-hour round-trip adventure yesterday, 9:30 am to 9:30 pm, but we're so glad we live so close to Duke (in the top ten facilities in the world for cancer, and the facility Ted Kennedy chose). It's only a three-hour drive to Durham, exactly, and not a difficult drive. And we have PRECIOUS neighbors who helped watch our dogs, which was a huge, huge relief to us.

Our visit mainly entailed meeting our surgeon, finding out what happens next, and having vast quantities of Bill's various bodily liquids handed over to strangers in various separate clinics. :)

We LOVE LOVE LOVE our surgeon! It is an unbelievable blessing that he accepted us as patients, as he is a major player in Urological Oncology--a chemist, a doctor of biochemistry, an MD, a professor of urological surgery at Duke, a professor of pathology at Duke, overseer of clinical trials at Duke, and a urological oncological surgeon at Duke, educated at Michigan, Duke, and residency at UCLA. His resume is here.

Not too shabby. :)

He (Dr. Philip Walther) was funny, friendly, warm, kind, compassionate, unrushed, talkative AND, if you can believe this--he's from Wisconsin! He's a huge Packer fan, and he and Bill got going on that subject. Tiny world.

We got almost no information at all from him about Bill's cancer status--he wouldn't speculate, even though I tried to get him to--and says he will know nothing until he takes the tumor out, scrapes the bladder, and gets the pathology reports back. Then we find out what our fight will entail.

He will be doing a transurethral bladder resection, which you can learn about here, if you are so inclined, and not dining at this time.

The best thing he said was that he was "not at all convinced" that Bill has a "urachal adenocarcinoma"--a very bad thing to have--and that Bill might simply have the common kind of bladder cancer that 90 percent of bladder cancers comprise--transitional cell carcinoma. You guessed it. You can read about that here, if you are interested.

PLAN
This coming Tuesday, we go back to Duke and meet the anesthesiologist, spending Tuesday night in a hotel. Wednesday morning (assuming Bill's appointment is confirmed--we find out tomorrow), Bill gets the procedure by Dr. Walther, then stays in the hospital Wednesday night and comes home on Thursday.

WHAT THE DUKE CLINICS WERE LIKE, IF YOU'RE CURIOUS
The Duke Clinics were fabulously organized, but what a sad insight we got into the world of so many cancer victims. Appearance-wise, each clinic (one for blood work, one for chemo, one for seeing doctors, one for every separate thing)looks EXACTLY like a gate at an airport, with a reception desk, and rows and rows of chairs. But each clinic seating area was JAM PACKED with people, most of whom were in visually terrible condition. Several of the clinics were so crowded, there was standing room only, and the people looked sooooooooo sick. From 20-year-olds up to very old, and such a variety--fat, thin, male, female, rich-looking, poor-looking, all races, even a pregnant lady. It was a shocking sight. All I wanted to do was spend the rest of my life helping them all somehow. It was grippingly heartbreaking!

But there was never more than a 30-second wait for us at each clinic we had to go to, and we were treated wonderfully by everyone.

IRONY
So much cancer is caused by tobacco, and Duke treats so many cancer victims, yet the whole Duke situation was funded by tobacco money--Durham being the tobacco capitol of the south. Kind of weird, eh?

SO, YEAH
So yeah. That's the update. Thanks for caring enough to read this blog thing. I hope you don't find our adventure upsetting, but more informative, even calming. Cancer seems 100% terrifying when it's out there circling like a shark, and you feel like it might grab you at any second, but once you get into the cancer world, you see that there's a lot more hope and a lot more options than you ever imagined. Not to say that there are no sad endings, but before this experience, I kind of naively thought ALL cancer endings HAD to be tragic, whenEVER someone got a diagnosis of cancer, but now I see that a huge number of people make it through safely and are completely cured.

And even for the ones who don't, there is beauty and love and light and surprise sprinkled in the most unexpected places.

GRATUITOUS LECTURE
Listen to me: don't use tobacco. Do NOT NOT NOT NOT do it. It IS a circling shark, and it IS looking for YOU.