Surgery before Christmas?

Karen's doing well. Earlier this week Karen managed to get a cancellation at the surgeon's so we met with Doctor Chamberlain today. We are a few steps closer to a concrete plan.

The location of the tumor is above a critical vein in Karen's liver. Normally you'd have 2 or 3 veins going in and out of the liver but because of Karen's resection she has only 1 left. That's not a big deal but the location of the tumor is fairly close to this vein and that makes surgery very difficult.

Our best option is Radio Frequency Ablation which involves burning the tumor with radio waves. The radio waves must heat the tumor to 70C for a 14 mins in order to get a good kill. The vein will act as a heat sink since blood is flowing through it, cooling the cells. It is also likely that the radiologist will not want to burn that close to the vein.

To get the remaining cells we'll resort to Cyberknife which is targeted radiation. This can get close to the vein which will tolerate the radiation pretty well. On the flip side the liver doesn't tolerate radiation very well so we're trying to minimize the amount of radiation by using the RFA first.

The game plan is yet to be confirmed but Chamberlain is trying to get us in next Monday or Tuesday (21st or 22nd of December). The RFA would involve a night or two in hospital but overall be non-invasive. The Cyberknife would not be done until a few weeks into January.

Appointments are still being made and hopefully we find out tomorrow what the schedule is.