Pathology Report

I ended up getting in to see a surgeon at the office today, not my surgeon but another one.  He did a full post op exam and didn't find anything abnormal, he thinks the nausea is just how my body is reacting to surgery and refilled my anti nausea meds. 

He didn't have the pathology report but logged onto the hospital network and downloaded it while I was there and printed me a copy.  My surgeon hasn't seen it yet and he will be calling me soon with an apt with the oncologist.

I was told I have stage 3 cancer.  The staging is confusing but the way I interpreted it is that I have the worst possible stage 3 without it being stage 4.  It is not stage 4 because it hasn't gone to other organs or structures but it is stage 3 T4a N2b.  The T4a means "tumor penetrates to the surface of the visceral peritoneum"  They tested 28 of my lymph nodes near the tumor and 7 of them tested positive.  This means it is N2b which means "Metastasis in 7 or more regional lymph nodes" and is the highest level of that stage.

As I said I haven't met with an oncologist, hopefully I will have an appointment by the end of the week.  My mom and I asked the surgeon lots of questions that he kindly answered although followed it by your oncologist will have to decide that but basically my cancer is very aggressive which he said it tends to be more aggressive in younger people.  He said he would guess that they would want to aggressively treat me in a few weeks after i have healed from surgery.

Here is a link to a site I found with staging kind of explained. http://www.cancerstaging.org/staging/posters/colon24x30.pdf

Please Pray!!!  That's all I have left to say after this horrible news, not what I was hoping for or expecting at all.