Post-surgery update #3

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5-12-2026

Post-surgery Update #3

We missed grabbing the brass ring.

The earlier imaging, both in Honolulu and here at UCSF, appeared to show a small obstruction in the Y where two bile ducts come out of the liver and join into a common duct that carries bile down to the intestines.

It appeared isolated, but a couple of areas could not be seen by the various scans.

So the plan was to remove that obstruction by surgically removing the section of the duct, inserting an artificial duct, and removing a section of the liver that it was closest to.

If this was done, it could be “curative.”

But one hidden area changed the whole picture. The surgery was done using a robot-assisted minimally invasive process. It soon found that an artery running through the area also had cancer in it, leading back to the gall bladder.

The doctors now think it is a gall bladder cancer that migrated and spread out into the artery and bile duct.

They removed my gall bladder and scaped out some of the cancerous obstruction. But there wasn’t any safe way at this point to surgically remove all the cancer.

So at this point, it moves to a more traditional period of chemo and likely radiation. A biopsy has been submitted for DNA testing which can then be used to better target treatments like immunotherapy (look it up!).

I’m in a very nice private hospital room with big screen tv, my iPhone, etc. Very little pain. I’ve started walking the hallways getting my balance and some strength back. But I have a tube running in my nose and down to my stomach which means I can’t eat until til it is removed, which they expect to do later today. Then I can start with broth and pudding, and work up to Food!

I expect to be discharged from the hospital on Friday and start the long process of recuperation, after which we hope to head home, hopefully before the end of June. Chemo and radiation can hopefully be done there.

So that’s the situation as it looks today. There are logistics involved. Right now, I’m not supposed to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk, so getting our suitcases down to Redwood City and into the house will be interesting. I may have to upgrade from Uber to a limo with professional driver used to providing the added services.

And we get cat photos from home at least once a day.

Post-surgery report #1

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The good news is that the robot-assisted surgery was done with minimally invasive procedures, and I’ve been resting comfortably in a private hospital room since late Monday afternoon.

But one of several the “known unknowns” that could not be fully examined in pre-surgery imaging turned into a roadblock. As a result, the surgery could not be fully completed as planned, although a lot was accomplished.

The Surgeon will be here later today to discuss what was done and recommended next steps.

I forgot that San Francisco is COLD!

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Okay, it really wasn’t all that cold. It was 52 (but “feels like” 50) when we woke up Sunday morning.

But coming from Honolulu, it felt very, very cold.

People here just wear more in the way of clothes! Layers. I’m trying to get with the program.

After a delicious salmon dinner last night with Meda’s sister, Mae, and her husband, today is my long day without food. Clear liquid diet only pre-surgery. Clear soup. Juice. Water. Gatorade. Yum!

And this was the view this morning. It’s foggy out there!

And don’t worry. Assuming that I do wake up after tomorrow’s surgery, I expect to be back sharing the experience while recovering. My trusty iPad is ready.

Remembering my mother on Mother’s Day

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This is a repost from another Mother’s Day several years ago.

This was a year that would have created problems for us.

Mother’s Day on May 10. My mom’s birthday on May 15. The problem was that we lived across the island and had busy professional lives in town. Two separate celebrations in the same week was hard for us to fit in, but the background guilt of letting one of these occasions go unrecognized was also hard to cope with. I recall that we ended up with one event, lunch or dinner, but with presents attributed to both occasions.

That seemed to work relatively well.

Musing about my mother….

I wasn’t home schooled, but I was definitely home educated by my mother, Helen Yonge Lind.

She encouraged me to read, and helped me break the rules when the librarian at the Kaimuki Library said I was too young to venture into the adult book section.

She also gave me the best single piece of advice ever, which I later found applicable far beyond its original context.

When she finally got tired of my endless questions how to make this or that in her tiny kitchen, she finally told me: “If you can read, you can cook.”

And then she shared her cookbook, a small three-ring binder with recipes carefully typed, then revised with handwritten notes based on experience, changing quality of ingredients, etc.

Now I could look recipes up myself.

“If you can read, you can cook.”

Sage advice.

I’ve later applied that in many other areas of life. Reading is a core skill. Master it. Love it. You’ll go a long way.

This photo was taken on the back steps from the living room of my parent’s house in Kahala, leading down onto the lanai and the back yard. It’s a scene that no longer exists, because when we renovated the old house after her death, we built a back deck at the same level as the house, rather than a lanai at ground level.

In any case, I can still remember this scene, repeated many times, the anticipation when turning the crank on the little music box and waiting for the punch line, “Pop! Goes the weasel!” Somehow knowing how it was going to end didn’t take away from the pleasure I got from it each and every time.

My mother died at the end of January 2013, a few months short of her 99th birthday.