On Wednesday morning, I had an exercise stress test that turned out to be less unpleasant than I had expected. In the afternoon, we met with my surgeon who, after reviewing the stress test results, offered the extrapleural pneumonectomy. The pneumonectomy is a major operation with significant risks and a long recovery period, but mesothelioma is a very bad disease, and the operation followed by a course of radiation gives me slim chance for a cure. The other treatment option was to have a more limited operation that removes the tumor and some associated tissue followed by chemotherapy, but the prognosis is even grimmer, so I went with the more radical option that should provide some live extension and the possibility of a cure. I've looked at some papers that report on mortality following the surgery and radiation and the results are hard to interpret because of the small number of patients and the differences in such variables as the extent of the disease, age, and other underlying medical conditions. I think I will do fine in the surgery and recovery, so it all depends on whether the disease crops up later in the other lung and whether the cancer has already metastasized and it laying wait in another part of my body. The odds are, however, that mesothelioma will win in the end, but there's hope for a cure.
I am writing this blog primarily for myself as a way of documenting our responses to our cancers, and I am happy to share it with others who might be interested; however, I think I some of the things I write about may be too much for some readers, so I am going to put a description of the lung removal on another page so those who don't want to know about the details can be spared.
The surgery is scheduled for July 29.
David
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