Well, I guess it’s time. Time to head to Denver and get these hormone-spiking tumors out of my liver. I’m having a pretty major surgery this Wednesday, November 30th, 2022. I’m ready to get this done and behind me but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little freaked out.

Freaked out not only because this is a major surgery with a major incision, but freaked out because the last time I had surgery, it was because my doctors thought they had found the only tumor and that I was going to be cancer-free once I was done. Sadly, that turned out not to be the case. The good news is that surgery led to better testing and to the eventual full diagnosis of my neuroendocrine cancer.

That was 4-years ago, and fortunately due to may amazing doc in Denver and a new artificial hormone shot I get in my butt once a month, my tumors have been stable for 4 years and there’s been no progression, which is awesome! My scans and bloodwork have been encouraging and I feel very fortunate.

However, these little buggers, and this disease are… complicated. Even when stable, the tumors release excess amounts of hormones into my body, causing a range of funky and uncomfortable issues that have ramped up over the last year. Since they’re in my liver, it’s not able to filter out those hormones like it was before. Because of that, my surgeon (a world-renowned neuroendocrine specialist that just happens to be in Denver) says it’s time for them to go. Dr. Liu will be removing the large tumors that are on either side of my liver, zap as many little ones within the liver as possible, remove my sludgy, stoned gallbladder, and if there’s time, remove the original tiny tumor that’s in my small intestine.

I’ll be at St. Luke’s hospital in Denver for up to a week with a 6-8 week recovery at home afterwards. Surgery is set for about 4-hours. My amazing wife Jenny will be by my side and I’m lucky to have family and friends nearby. Jenny will be posting updates to this blog and perhaps I’ll sneak in a few in moments of post-surgery drug-induced moments.

More details about what’s going on in the 7-minute video I recorded below if you’re interested. Full link to the video can be found here: https://www.loom.com/share/b01ea36e0e5847de8339a350e749a804

For the nerdy amongst you, there’s also a good video by my surgeon, Dr. Eric Liu, that gives some additional context around what I have.

Starting at 4:32 until about 15:00 there’s a pretty good overview of the disease and its complexities. If you watch more than that, we’ll have to talk about some more entertaining things to watch – I recommend Andor on Disney+. However, Dr. Liu is funny and it’s one of my favorite things about him.

For those of you following along on my journey, thank you for your love and support. For those of you on your own journey (and everyone is), I hope you’re thriving and finding moments of peace, happiness, and Apricity, a new word I just learned that means the feeling of sunshine on your face on a cold day.