Pathology and more

Hi everyone! We have another update on Brandon’s progress. 

Brandon is two weeks post-op, and he has recovered from surgery very well. He’s up, walking, and able to be out of the house for a handful of hours and have fun before needing rest. 

Last Wednesday, we saw the urologist where we got the pathology results. They found a rare and very aggressive type of cancer, embryonal carcinoma, which is not what we were expecting. It is a fast spreading cancer and the tumor was growing quickly. Regardless, the urologist said we found it early and the prognosis is still very good! 

Yesterday, Brandon got a PET scan that should tell us if the cancer has spread. While we don’t have those results yet, we saw the oncologist today and he sounded very optimistic. 

While we wait for the PET scan results, there are a few things for us to consider. If the scan comes back showing no signs of the disease, we will have options we can consider to prevent reoccurrence of this type of cancer, which has a 40-60% reoccurrence rate. If the results come back showing cancer still present, he will need 4 rounds of chemo, without question. 

Overall, we left the oncologist feeling optimistic. The doctor said his prognosis is still very good (~95%), and instilled a lot of hope in us as we move forward.

We are unsure of what day-to-day looks like while doing chemo, but if Brandon does chemo he will be taking more time off of work and I will most likely take off a longer period of work as well to care for him. 

We will update as we know more. We are still so incredibly grateful for everyone’s support. This has been a very taxing journey, and every single bit of help is felt tremendously. You are all our village, and we are so thankful to be part of such a generous and loving community.