What the surgery revealed

I'll try to give a good overview of what Dr. Elliott discovered during the surgery while still respecting Peg's privacy. And by the way, if you google any of this you'll be bombarded with more incomprehensible minutiae than you can handle, most of which has nothing to do with Peg's individual case. Don't bother, it'll either make you angsty or cranky.

His initial prognosis (which will probably be confirmed tomorrow in lab tests) is epithelial ovarian cancer. This is good (what? cancer is good?) because it's a type of cancer that's very responsive to chemotherapy. Chemo= yummy rat poison; epithelial cancer= hungry rats.

Although the CT scan had shown spots on Peg's liver that could have been cancer nodules, Dr. Elliott found through physical examination they were normal spots that had nothing to do with cancer. There were cancer cells on her spleen which he was able to remove without removing the spleen. He removed 15cm of her transverse colon and reattached the ends (actually, they use staples. I kid you not).

He also found no cancer cells on or around her pancreas, which was a big relief. Peg's father, who died before I met her, had pancreatic cancer.

The metric for success in this type of "debulking" surgery, where the affected organs and surrounding tissue are removed, is that there is less than 1cm of cancerous material left intact. Dr. Elliott was literally ten times better than that-- there's less than 1mm, which chemotherapy is likely to gobble faster than I can go through a bag of Fritos. And believe me, I can hoover a bag of Fritos like you wouldn't believe (which is precisely why we don't keep them in our house).

So-- nothin' but sunshine from our corner of the world. I should probably stop saying this over and over because you know it already, but thank you all for your support for our family in whatever form it takes. Know that we are grateful for your just being present in our lives... everything else is gravy.