It just happened so much faster than we assumed,” Voge recalled. We knew that we were going to have to deal with it again. “Then all of a sudden, everything kind of fell apart again.”Īt a follow-up appointment in February 2020, Voge's doctors told him the tumor was growing again and the majority of what they had removed had grown back. By the fall, the couple decided they wanted to travel full-time, so they sold their house in Minnesota. … We felt really good leaving,” Voge said. “There was no indication of new tumor growth.
At his six-month follow-up in August of 2019, everything looked fine. The summer after Voge's first surgery, the outdoors-loving couple bought a trailer and traveled around state parks in Minnesota. … They put you on a watch-and-wait routine,” he said. “The path after this surgery is monitoring. Although his doctors said there was still some tumor left around his liver and stomach, Voge's surgery otherwise went well, and he was back to his normal routine in six weeks. The surgery also removed his gallbladder, spleen, appendix and omentum, which hangs down from the stomach. “My first surgery, he took out right away about three liters of mucin,” Voge said. De-bulking doesn't cure PMP, but removing the malignant jelly and hardened mucus can relieve pressure on other organs. PMP is usually treated through a combination of surgery to remove as much of the tumor and mucus as possible (a process called "de-bulking") and heated chemotherapy, Vaidya explained. A week later, he went to the Mayo Clinic near his home for treatment and learned his cancer would not respond to typical chemotherapy. Voge said while it was overwhelming and upsetting to get diagnosed with PMP, he felt very lucky that he got a diagnosis in four days. PMP is commonly missed or misdiagnosed because it is so rare - two to four cases per one million people, according to Vaidya. Common symptoms include abdominal pain and swelling, but patients may be asymptomatic for years.
It can squeeze the intestines, bile ducts, or blood vessels to a point where “patients are obstructed so they can’t eat or drink,” Vaidya explained.īecause this type of cancer is so slow-growing, it often goes undetected for a long time. The expansive jelly-like substance can eventually harden like cement and wrap around or strangle the rest of the organs. … It layers and causes compression of the organs inside the abdomen,” Vaidya explained. “There is no control on the amount of mucus that secretes. This causes a buildup of mucus-secreting tumor cells, which slowly fill the abdominal cavity. Anil Vaidya, a surgeon at Cleveland Clinic and the Voges' doctor, told Snow. PMP, also known as jelly belly, typically starts with a slow-growing tumor in the appendix that bursts and starts squeezing out mucus, Dr.
“A couple of days before I’d gone for a run, we were eating fine.
Only a few days after going to the doctor for his “funny-looking belly button,” he was diagnosed with a rare form of appendix cancer, pseudomyxoma peritonei, or PMP. A CT scan the following day would reveal he had cancer of his appendix. “So we did an ultrasound the next day, and they found masses in my liver,” Voge said. But routine blood work revealed his liver enzymes levels were off. “He said, it’s just an umbilical hernia, we don’t need to do anything about it,” Voge recalled said. He went to his primary care physician to have it checked out just in case. Andy and Rachel Voge (Courtesy Andy and Rachel Voge)
0 kommentar(er)
