Marv Katz, who included the Beacon Journal in his 40-year career, posted this information yesterday about his daughter, Lisa, on the CaringBridge.org web site:
This is from Lisa's dad, Marv Katz, with editing by both Lisa and her sister, Susie...payback for the editing I did of their high-school papers.
The majority of Lisa's surgery did not go forward today. The surgical oncologist did a laproscopy first and found a number of rice-grain sized nodules throughout her abdomen that a quick biopsy showed to be cancerous. They provided something less than the "pristine" environment he'd hoped to find, and he decided not to go ahead. He closed the two small incisions he'd made and sent Lisa home. The nodules aren't immediately threatening to Lisa's well-being, so Lisa will go back on chemo in two weeks.
The better news is that what appeared to be a tumor near one of her ovaries is instead a cyst, and also apparently non-threatening. The other tumor is less accessible and the surgeon decided not to examine it because that would involve more dissection. He also determined the source of Lisa's recent abdominal pain likely was her liver, which showed a considerable amount of scar tissue from the chemo and radiation treatments.
There's no way of knowing whether the small nodules may have been larger earlier, and reduced in size by the chemo and radiation, but that's a possibility -- one we can hope to be the case. Knowing more about them may enable the medical oncologist to make changes in the chemo cocktail to make it more effective.
The information gained today also may help make Lisa eligible for any appropriate clinical trials at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, if she chooses to participate.
In the meantime, Lisa is home and, after a four-hour nap this afternoon, she has joined us in the living room for a while, kicked back in half of the reclining love seat with Susie next to her doing some charting for work. We've been recounting the day together and, since Lisa had been down for most of Sunday afternoon and evening with her bowel prep (Happy Birthday!), reading through posts to CaringBridge from midday yesterday through today. Lisa has also gotten to field a couple of phone calls as they've come in within the hour, surprising the callers who sure didn't expect her to be here or answering the phone.
Lisa is experiencing the dry mouth that is routine after surgery and is also a bit tender where the surgeon did his work. She and Thomas have felt the love and support of all of you, particularly those among the sisterhood, and now brotherhood, of the purple toes (and shirts). I'm sure she'll be posting here herself as soon as she feels fit enough to deal with her laptop.
Click on the headline for an earlier report on Lisa's health situation.
