Colwell Family's Medical Journey: Support Needed

The Colwell families journey began June 2022, took a sharp turn March 2023, added another roller coaster to the trip in November 2023, an amazing Christmas gift 12/23 – 12/24, recovery in process for one channel and one roller coaster ride to finish yet.

Although it might sound cryptic. It is the one sentence summary for what has been happening in Gina's realm for the past 20 months with the heaviest part in the last year.

The beginning of the journey starts with a CT scan on Gina's husband showing a change in his bile ducts. Further tests lead an evaluation for a liver transplant. That was an intense week of a battery of tests and meetings. One of the tests was not able to come back right away due to supply chain shortage for the reagent needed for the test. Without the missing test result, Gina's husband was too healthy to be put on the transplant list. They just needed to figure out what to do with the pain that was not going away and was starting to increase and if they could do reconstruction surgery to change out the bile ducts.

Then the test results came back in March 2023 (4 months after the test was taken). Bile duct cancer. In one duct for sure, not completely certain about the second duct. Required a repeat procedure to confirm findings. Findings came back quickly this time to confirm bile duct cancer in both main bile ducts of the liver. April 2023 was spent in radiation and liquid chemo treatments, getting put on the liver transplant list and education for what was to come. Learned there are lists for each organ for each blood type. He was not the common blood type and could not do a living donor (he needed an entire liver) since he had the cancer. Started chemo pill regiment and learned his body was not going to tolerate the chemo pills, no matter how they tried to modify the regiment. So, they spent the next month's dealing with issues that kept happening and hoping they could find him a new liver before the cancer metastasized.

November 2023 the added roller coaster became Gina's mother. While Gina had her husband in the hospital dealing with a duct shutting down, her mother was sick. Gina finally got her to go into the doctor. Day after her appointment the clinic called back and sent her to the ER for a hydration infusion and more blood tests. She didn’t get to go home; she was being admitted to the hospital. A week in the hospital resulted in a diagnosis of Adenocarcinoma – small intestine cancer. Her stomach was blocked from the mass. Met the oncology surgeon and developed a plan for surgery. The first surgery didn’t go the preferred method, but she had a bypass for her stomach so she would be able to eventually eat. Next step was to develop her treatment plan. She started chemo right away.

Gina's car by this point was on autopilot for the hospitals and doctors. Her husband was at Red Wing ER and Mayo in Rochester and her mom was at Burnsville Fairview and U of M.

December 23rd at 8:30am they got the call they'd been waiting on for her husband. They to the hospital to get ready, surgery got delayed 4 hours, so it didn’t start until 8pm that day. Normal liver transplant is a 3 – 5-hour surgery. He of course took 8 ½ hours due to additional difficulties of removing the old liver, reconstructing new bile ducts, and needing to replace his stomach aorta that the radiation and chemo had damaged. He had been hitting anomalies throughout the whole journey, so it wasn’t a surprise. They had to live in Rochester for a while after surgery but are home now. He is on the recovery path. He is where they expect him to be at this point in time, it is just a long process.

The other roller coaster (Gina's mom) has had chemo treatments. She had two more chemo treatments in February, has scans and a couple of tests in March, and surgery in April to try and remove the tumor and reconstruct the area. Her surgery is estimated to take 6 hours. Prayers will be needed for her to come through surgery well without any significant deficits.