biopsy results.

The news is better than it seems at first. The story has a good ending.

Caryn was awakened this morning with a very poor partial delivery of her final biopsy results. Dr. Liu was not with the team on their rounds, and after examining her to see how she was healing, one of the other doctors said as he was walking out the door "Oh, the results were as we expected, it's stage 3". And then walked out the door. So everyone was rather frustrated and angry, since we didn't get to ask any questions, and it seemed like bad news on the surface, since we were hoping it was stage 2, and not in the lymph nodes.

So we had Dr. Liu paged, and she said that she would be by this afternoon and answer our questions. So she says that yes, they determined it is stage 3b. But the lymph nodes they biopsied showed no signs of cancer, and we thought that was what they would use to determine stage 2 vs. 3. Turns out there was a very tiny tumor on the omentum where it was probably touching one of the ovaries. That's the layer of fat underneath the stomach that they removed. So the only place there were tumors were ovaries, uterus, and omentum, all of which were removed. So, they got all of the tumors and there is only microscopic cancer remaining. All of the biopsies they took around her pelvis and abdomen came back negative. There is no cancer in her lymph system.

So, the news is as good as to be expected. It seems the tumors were very contained and localized.

We got a little more information on the chemo, which they hope to start 2 weeks after she comes home from the hospital. But we're focusing on recovery from surgery and getting her feeling better and home right now.

Caryn was very upset after the doctor visit this morning, but is feeling a little better after talking to Dr. Liu. She's been pretty nauseous today, but got the go ahead to eat crackers and clear liquids. She's had about 4 or 5 crackers.

Dr. Rebecca Liu is really wonderful by the way. She gets the thumbs up.

-matt