Tuesday September 1 Adventure

This entry will be short because we want to get the news out before the night ends.

We thought a blog would be a good way to do this, as you can read it or not, as you wish, and leave comments, and won't have me emailing the living starch right out of you (me=Beth). This leaves the choice with you as to how much info you want.

So today, Bill had his CT scan with Dr. Pitts in Boone.

The results could have been a lot better, but a little bit worse.

Backstory: Friday (four days ago) Bill was diagnosed with a bladder tumor in the top (dome or superior wall) of his bladder. The first diagnostic step after that is a CT scan to find out more about the tumor.

So today he had his CT scan, which took about an hour and involved drinking a bunch of weird milky gradoo out of a glass bottle.

The results are not definitive until a radiologist at the Medical Center reads the scan, but the urologist, after many years in his specialty, suspects strongly that Bill might have one of the most aggressive forms of bladder cancer, and the rarest.

It is called adenocarcinoma and is on the urachal point, where the remnants of the umbilical cord connect to the top of the bladder. It might even be called urachal adenocarcinoma, but I'm not sure. You can google it for details.

Anyway, the doctor is also worried that the CT scan appeared to show that the tumor may have broken through the wall of his bladder, but he's not sure of that, either, or about spreading or what stage the cancer is. That's for the radiologist, pathologist, whatever-ist.

Ultimately, however, this urologist does not want to work with this rare kind of cancer, and is referring Bill to the top urology oncology center in the US: Duke University, to the top surgeon. This surgeon has completely cured people of this exact kind of cancer, and we have reason for optimism. Cures have been effected even without total removal of the bladder, just removal of the cancerous portion.

So now we wait.

We wait for the radiology report to give more details on the kind of cancer, and we wait to hear when we will go to Duke to meet the Big Dude of Bladders.

We will post the next bit of information here as soon as we get it.

Bill's mood is calm and optimistic, but we both had our minds warped by the news that it might be this crazy kind of cancer. More than 90 percent of bladder cancers are non-theatrical, calm little treatable things. We kind of expected to hear that it was that. But no. This type is so rare that the urology websites say some urologists never encounter it even once in their entire lifetime of practice!

I'm using THOSE numbers to say that mathematically, the chances are that Bill does NOT have that type.

Anyway, God bless our children and our angelic neighbors who are all working together to come here and help us out, including helping with our three little dogs while we are at Duke.

And God bless the friends of ours who have written us these gorgeous, loving emails, and who have taught us a BAM Right in the Head lesson about what stunning effects human love can have on a dark night.

And God bless GOD who has shown us that He can appear at the most unlikely places in the most unlikely ways with the most amazing timing.

Thanks for reading this and for caring about Bill. Please pray for him or think good thoughts or beam him light or whatever you do. He can feel it. Thank you, thank you.

Love,

Beth