Dr. Orr & Surgery

Waiting is so hard. Another weekend goes by. I hear from Dr. Ravid on Tuesday. It’s 10 AM & he says that I should receive a call from Dr. Orr’s office to schedule an appointment. I waited until 2 PM then I called Dr. Orr’s office only to be told that I missed my appointment time. I had been scheduled for 1:30… apparently Debbie had tried calling & I didn’t answer…I was apparently on the telephone with Dr. Ravid & didn’t realize that she had called & left a message. She said she would check with Dr. Orr to see when I could be rescheduled. She called back & scheduled me for Friday. I couldn’t believe that I was going to have to wait 4 days. I got so upset that I called Dr. Ravid’s office & he called me back. He was able to get me an appointment for the following morning. What a relief. I saw Dr. Orr, on 4/29/2014 (Bruce’s birthday & our 42^nd anniversary…what a way to celebrate), met Cami his nurse & now chemo nurse and was set up for possible surgery on 5/1/2014. I was scheduled to have a laparoscopy & possibly a laparotomy…it would depend on how much tumor was found. If there was a lot then I would just have the scope, followed by chemotherapy & debulking surgery later. If there wasn’t much tumor then I would havea laparotomy followed with chemotherapy. The laparoscopy is where the surgeon makes four small incisions &uses a lighted scope to look around as well as do different procedures. A laparotomy is where he makes an actual incision in the abdomen to remove the uterus, ovaries, fallopian tube & any tumors. I remember waking up & feeling my abdomen…I didn’t have a large incision so I thought that meant there was too much tumor to debulk, not good, but instead Dr. Orr actually was able to remove most of the tumors laparoscopically. I have both ovarian cancer & Adenocarcinoma of the uterus. Having a hysterectomy (removal of uterus)/oophorectomy (removal of ovaries)/salpingectomy (removal of fallopian tubes) has essentially cured the Adenocarcinoma of the uterus but not the Ovarian which is a pT3c (which means I have stage 3 Ovarian Cancer). I had the pleural effusion on the lt. side drained (fluid in left lung removed by needle aspiration). It did not contain any malignant cells. I was discharged home on 5/ 3/2014.