The path...

The oncologist just called us with the pathology results. We really haven't had time to digest it all, and you can look up with stats as well as I can, but suffice it to say the news wasn't good.

The tumor was large, about 3 cm x 4 cm. It did not penetrate the lining of the bowel, but it was almost there. 9 out of the 19 lymph nodes biopsied showed malignancies. They were able to get a clean resection of the tumor itself, both the margins were negative for cancer.

The cancer cells themselves were grade 2 out of 4, so they weren't a very high grade.

The staging is T3N2. This means stage 3 with more than 4 lymph nodes involved.

I think I'm not really in the mood for rah-rah, good cheer, pick-me-up, enthusiastic comments right now. So it's OK to say nothing at all. Maybe we'll just all have a moment of silence.