Timeline so far

Summary:  July of this year I was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic colon cancer.  I underwent surgery to remove my primary tumor July 13th at St. Mary's hospital in San Francisco, and have since undergone 9 cycles (rounds) of chemotherapy to treat my disease.  Serena and I are working with oncologists from both St. Mary's and UCSF (a leading cancer research and treatment center) to manage my ongoing treatment.  There is no prognosis at this point, and we remain optimistic about my chances to beat this.

Rather than relying strictly on palliative treatment, Serena has been my champion in finding options for eradicating the observable metastases through surgery.  Just this past Monday I had a diagnostic laparoscopy at UC San Diego.  Good news: the disease appears to be as limited as we'd hoped, with no apparent spread to the liver.  While this is not an indicator of the effectiveness of treatments to date, it is evidence of limited disease such that surgery to remove the metastases is an option for us.  With luck we expect to schedule that surgery down in San Diego for late January.  I'll complete three more cycles of chemotherapy between now and the end of December, then stop until surgery.

The surgery is called HIPEC, and you can find more information here if you are interested.

After that, we plan to reassess treatment and monitoring with both  UCSF and St. Mary's.  We are fortunate to have access to both of these facilities.  We are encouraged and are EXTREMELY GRATEFUL for everyone's support and help these past several months.  It's good to be going into the holidays with some positive news for a change.

Stay tuned...