The Official Diagnosis

Finally, January rolled around and the MD Anderson appointment came and now they needed to perform their own tests. For a couple of weeks they performed more tests. At one of the appointments doctor mentioned the word "cancer", but even then it wasn't officially diagnosed. On Wednesday, January 20th the official diagnosis came in as Stage III Esophageal Cancer.

This was a shocking diagnosis. I mean, I would have pegged my dad for a few psychological disorders (:)) but cancer was a real surprise. Cancer does not run in our family. When Dad turned 50 he had a physical and a doctor's visit just because he was 50. He visited a doctor to check out his heart and had the colonoscopy (ew) that we keep hearing needs to be done once your 50 (thanks Katie Curic) and everything was fine. Not only was the cancer diagnosis shocking but also the stage. Stage III!!!!

After the official diagnosis came in, there were more tests (there are apparently lots of tests when it comes to cancer and then when those are done, there are more) and the result came back with the official staging of T3N1aM0. This basically means that it is in the 3rd stage (out of 4), that the tumor has grown through the esophageal wall, has spread to 1 (only 1) lymph node and it HAS NOT metastasized to other areas.