I am a teacher, half of my life has been around the three-foot podium in the village, life is very comfortable, and not particularly big pursuit. The company’s main goal is to provide a better solution to the problem. The two girls are working adults, but more worried than when they were around, always want them to have a successful family and career, they can help bring up the children after retirement.
But I don’t want to get older and live like I’m the one worrying about my family.
Hepatic hemangioma detected in physical exam, hospital suspects malignancy
Since my two daughters started working, they have been telling us to have regular medical checkups, and in mid-March, as usual, it was time for a medical checkup, and I had a series of tests according to the plan given by my children. The money was not spent in vain this time, as I received a report card for a hemangioma after the ultrasound. The company’s main goal is to provide a comprehensive range of products and services to the public.
Your son-in-law was more nervous and made an appointment with a nearby hospital for an enhanced CT in 8 days.
The kids were nervous, but I was the one who was most at ease. The first thing I did was to look up the results on the Internet, which said that hemangiomas are not a big problem. But the kids were still cautious when they heard it was a hemangioma on the liver.
“Multiple occupancies in the liver, consider malignancy!” The first thing I did was to take a look at the report of the enhanced CT, and I accidentally glanced at the line of conclusion, and my heart pounded. The doctor who read the results had to give me a hospital order on the spot, but my heart was pounding: such a big problem, can the hospital at home take care of it?
“Doctor, wait a minute, let’s go home and talk about it.” I took my hand to block the doctor’s prescription pen and decided to go to a big hospital in Beijing.
The tumor was growing rapidly and the doctor recommended early surgery
Except for headaches and fever that we will solve nearby, when we encounter big trouble, we go to Beijing to go to a big hospital.
The liver was multiply occupied, and the tumor had grown another centimeter in diameter compared to a week earlier. I was relieved to have such results in front of me. The doctor advised us to operate as soon as possible because the tumor was growing too fast.
Determined, treated, and with no extra thoughts, we stayed in Beijing and waited for our hospital bed. It was a relatively idle few days, and I snapped out of my initial fear and wondered blindly what the hell was going on. I hardly ever get sick, so how can I get sick and have a major problem?
Never knew I had hepatitis B. My mother passed away from liver disease
.
After reviewing the whole procedure, I remembered that I was told I was a hepatitis B carrier at home during an intensive CT. 55 years old, I was told I had liver cancer and was also a hepatitis B carrier, which I knew nothing about before that, even though my mom had cirrhosis that turned into liver ascites.
I also had liver function tests in the previous two years, but no doctor said I had a problem with my liver. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public. The old lady was very strong and had a strong temper, not eating or talking for three to five days if she was unhappy. Until I was diagnosed, I thought my mother had liver problems because of her bad temper. Because the doctor in the village said, “People who lose their temper a lot are prone to liver problems.”
But unlike me, who spent most of my life with the village children, I don’t have the temperament of my mother, and I can get by with anything, let alone lose my temper with people at the top of my voice. I was rarely stern in front of my two daughters. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to its customers.
I consider myself a “good-tempered” person, but the hepatitis B virus that I was born with has been with me since birth and has become a hidden bomb.
I have learned that liver disease is not directly related to “good temper”.
Because I didn’t know I had hepatitis B, I smoked and drank a lot. The first thing I did was to take care of the problem.
I was told by my eldest daughter that “nicotine in cigarettes, like ethanol, the metabolite of alcohol, is extremely bad for the liver and is one of the main risk factors for disease and liver cancer.
Because I knew nothing about hepatitis B, I indulged these risk factors closer and closer, pushing myself to the brink of liver cancer. This is not an exception, there are many more people like me in China, in the same ward. About a week after I was hospitalized, a patient from Sichuan came to the next bed. He also had advanced hepatitis B to hepatocellular carcinoma, but before that, even though his unit had annual physicals, he knew nothing about the hepatitis B he was carrying, as I did, because hepatitis B is not a routine medical test.
So he didn’t leave behind any of the smoking and drinking that Chinese men love. The only blessing is that we both have daughters who don’t smoke or drink, and they grew up with the hepatitis B vaccine. I just hope they don’t contract hepatitis B again and don’t live in fear of liver disease.
The nation’s first robotic “Alps” two-step surgery
On April 7, we received a call from the hospital, and when a bed became available, we were hospitalized that night, and the tests started early on the 8th, and the doctor looked at the results and explained our condition.
He said that the tumor had eroded more than 70% of the liver, and since I already had hepatitis B and my liver was sclerotic, if the lesion was removed at once, the remaining liver would probably not be able to support the body’s functions and would be life-threatening.
In this case, I was given the ALPPS two-step procedure. The first step is to split the tumor-encroached liver from the “good liver” and ligate the part of the liver that goes to the tumor, so that more blood flows to the “good liver” and that part grows; when it is big enough to meet the body’s needs alone, the second step is to remove the tumor-encroached part completely. When it grows large enough to meet the body’s needs alone, the second step is done to completely remove the part that the tumor has encroached upon. This two-step procedure ensures the safety and complete removal of the tumor.
The doctor told me that the difficulty with this type of surgery is that it has to be performed twice in a short period of time, which is more damaging to the body, and that the hospital can perform robotic surgery. The delicate operation of robotic surgery can be less traumatic, which makes the surgery much more successful.
It’s minimally invasive, but it’s still a surgery, and I was a little nervous having never had one before.
This is the first stage of the surgery that went well. The surgeon made small holes in my abdomen and had tools inserted through the holes to split the entire liver and do a vascular ligation on the part that had the tumor.
I didn’t feel any discomfort after the surgery and my appetite was exceptionally good, except for some things the doctor instructed me not to eat for a while, so I didn’t feel weak at all either, and I joked that the surgery was done quietly.
Twelve days later, the doctor was going to give me another stage 2 surgery. The first time I had the surgery, I was significantly more relaxed and in better shape. The doctor explained to me before the surgery that I could be discharged when the part of my liver that had been eroded by the tumor was removed and observed for problems. After hearing this, I felt particularly secure. While waiting for the previous patient to come out of surgery, I also talked to my family and said I was afraid I would have to stop drinking in the future.
In three and a half hours, the surgeon operated the robot delicately, with exceptionally little bleeding during the surgery, and the liver, which had been divided with the tumor in the first surgery, was removed without incident this time.
Later, the doctor told me that my surgery actually filled a gap in China, and that it was the first reported case of ALPPS where both surgeries were done robotically, and a full 20-millimeter diameter tumor-encroached liver was removed from my body by robotic surgery.
As a “first-timer,” there was no precedent for this in China, but I was in surprisingly good shape. I was wheeled back to my room from the operating room and was able to move from the cot to the bed on my own, without any help.
I recovered well after surgery, and my daughter complimented me on my decisiveness
.
The day after surgery, the stomach tube and catheter were removed, and I was lucky to avoid all the hardships I had to go through with open surgery. The children also seemed much more relaxed. I’m grateful for this post-op experience. Although being sick is inevitably a problem for the kids, it’s better to have less of it.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m older, but other than the initial fear when I was diagnosed, I’ve been in a much better state of mind since I got into the hospital. It’s also possible that the minimally invasive robotic surgery made it a lot less painful to realize that liver cancer isn’t that scary.
My oldest daughter has always praised me for coming to Beijing at the first opportunity after being diagnosed, because she had a doctor friend who said that if I delayed another two months, the gods might not be able to save me, after all, the tumor grows a centimeter a week, and if it grows any longer, it will be a big disaster.