Tavner's visit

Rough Night

Curtis had a rough night last night. He was violently vomiting and feeling very sick. They decided they needed to pump his stomach and they put an NG (nasogastric) tube in his nose down his throat and into his stomach to bypass his small intestines. He hasn't been able to sleep and is supposed to get up and move around as much as he can today. Easier said than done I suppose..

Surgery

The surgery went well. We found out today that the tumor is attached to his bladder. The surgeon hopes that the chemo and radiation combo will shrink the tumor so they will not have to remove a portion of his bladder, but they won't know for sure until after chemo/radiation treatments. We see the oncologist on January 4th and they will start chemo immediately. There are also some areas on the outside of sigmoid colon that the surgeon is questioning whether it is cancer or just inflammation/scar tissue. A biopsy was done and results will be back in 3-5 days. He is currently at St. Mark's Hospital Room 4 West Room 8. Comments/Questions are welcome.

Shan

Long Day..

Today we went and saw a fertility specialist at Reproductive Care Center.. That was fun.. Not. Fertile Hope has an awesome program for cancer patients that would like to have children in their future. They contract with certain fertility clinics and offer a discount off the services of sperm banking for cancer patients. It really helps us make the process less stressful and certainly more affordable..  Next we went and saw an ostomy specialist and learned about all the different kids of bags and he got his marking where his stoma will be. Surgery is scheduled for 1pm tomorrow (December 28, 2010) at St. Mark's Hospital. I will post the floor and room number tomorrow if friends and family would like to visit. He will be inpatient for 3-5 days, so I will keep everyone updated before he goes home.

Family

We would like to send a huge Thank You to my family in Northern Utah for their generous donations to us. We truly could not ask for a more supportive environment through this rough time. (I am getting emotional just typing this).. We sincerely thank you and appreciate all the love, support and prayers! THANK YOU!

To our friends and family:
Curtis Bryce Howard was diagnosed with aggressive Colorectal Carcinoma on Thursday December 16, 2010. I will try and keep this post updated so everyone can follow as we progress through this journey. During his initial colonoscopy, we were told they did not think he had cancer, they thought it was Crohn's Disease. He has a 15cm stricture from his rectum to his sigmoid colon, generally in cancer the stricture is 5-6cm in length. They did 10 biopsies during the colonoscopy and the results showed infiltrating, intermediate to poorly differentiated carcinoma compatible with adenocarcinoma of the colon. We were referred to a colon and rectal surgeon at St. Mark's Hospital. He referred us to an oncologist, urologist, and someone to educate us about Curtis' ileostomy surgery which is now scheduled for Tuesday, December 28th at St. Mark's. Curtis will be inpatient for a few days to recover from this surgery. Chemo should start soon after the ileostomy, but we are still waiting to get into the oncologist. After seeing the urologist on Monday, we were told that his prostate is not affected by the cancer, the issues Curtis are experiencing is due to inflammation. I will post again soon with more information. Thanks for all your love and support!