On November 25, 2015 I learned for sure that I had liver
cancer. Actually this had been pretty clear for a week or two already, but that
was the day my wife Teresa and I received the biopsy result. The biopsy confirmed
the evidence from an ultrasound and two CT scans that I had cancer, and also enabled the doctors to tell us what type it was: cholangiocarcinoma. This particular cancer, a very rare one,
comes from the bile duct; the bile duct, as I’ve now learned, is not just one
large pipe for delivering the bile to perform its functions elsewhere in the
digestive system but an entire network of capillary-size uptake tubes pervading
the liver. I have growths in different parts of my liver, which means I have
stage IV cholangiocarcinoma. But at the same time the various scans have not
found that the disease has escaped the liver and lodged anywhere else, and so
on the scale of stage IV’s, I am not at the upper (worse) end.
The doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering concluded that what
I needed was to start chemotherapy without delay, and I had my first infusion
on December 4, the day after my last class of the fall semester. I’m doing
three three-week cycles, two weeks on and one week off; three days ago,
December 23, I had the first infusion of the second cycle. At the end of these
cycles, they’ll do another CT scan, and then we’ll see where things stand. As I
understand it, depending on the results at that point the doctors may want more
of the same; more of the same plus additional interventions; or a switch to one
or more other treatment approaches.
Those are the basic medical facts. I haven’t yet said
anything about how profoundly my wife, family, friends, colleagues and students have been supporting me; nor anything about the experience of entering the
immense institutions devoted to treating cancer; nor about the day to day issues
of dealing with the illness and the side-effects of its treatment. All of that
and more I hope to write about in coming posts. I want to provide this account
of my encounter with cancer, but I’ll end this post by emphasizing that my main
goal is not to provide this account but to fight the disease in every way possible and be around for
many years to come, living a life free of, or at least not dominated by, this
illness.
