Friday, March 12, 2010

12 Mar - ERCP Went Well

Sarah's ERCP procedure went as well as we could have hoped today. Apparently she has an unusually narrow bile duct (go figure). The doc pulled her old stent out, which was on the small side to match her bile duct, and it was in fact plugged up. He was able to place a significantly wider stent so we're hoping that she'll have much better flow which translates into improved liver function levels and a bilirubin level below 3 (it's 8.6 right now which is super high - normal high limit is 1). Sarah's feeling fairly good and is just recovering from the narcotics. She's even hungry and was hoping to get in a good dinner but her doc ordered full liquid diet only.
So now we'll have to wait for a few days and see what her bilirubin level does - that will determine what we do next. The gastro doc that did her procedure did see indication of the liver tumors pressing on some of the biliary duct tree in the liver and he also saw some likely tumor tissue in the head of the pancreas where the bile duct passes through. We're hoping that Taxol treatments can beat those back and shrink them.

1 comment:

Eone Moore Beck said...

So glad to hear the procedure went well and a new wider stent is in place. Wish she could have a chocolate milkshake. And a few cheeseburgers. Thank you SO MUCH for updating the blog so quickly.