Chrons and Liver Cancer research program

This is Erik @erikmilham, Tom’s brother (the longest living with him, brother). I will be hijacking Tom’s Facebook and Instagram accounts for now. Tom decided on Monday to go on Hospice at Summerlin Hospital ICU room 380 in Las Vegas. Visitor are allowed! However, Tom is now unresponsive, on 10mg/hr Morphine and comfortably “napping”. His decision to do this was very well thought out and consulted with many physicians. This seems extremely quick, we understand. I will tell you the nutshell version. Tom has been dealing with Chron’s disease for years. Things took a turn in April this year where a previously thought “Thrombus” in the portal vein of his Liver might be the start of a very aggressive adenocarcinoma/cholangiocarcinoma with Mucous features. The Biopsy to determine this was done on August 14th. This type of cancer is analogous to “Bird”, just a general term, and doesn’t get to the root like “Calliope hummingbird, Scientific Name: Selasphorus calliope”. That doesn’t happen unless you are eligible for targeted treatments. Tom on August 23rd came to California with me to Loma Linda Hospital to discuss Liver Transplant and other options. He stayed for a few days with us (what a blessing). LLUH did an ERCP and put in a stent to help reduce the Bilirubin which was 21. Our only hope was to get that to 10 or less and we could discuss a resection of the Right Anterior lobe of the liver. Transplantation was not an option due to the size of the tumor mass. No metastases were found anywhere else, only right lobe of liver. On September 17th Tom was so weak he couldn’t walk. He went to Summerlin Hospital where they found he was Septic. Performed a CT and ran special labs for the infection. Infection was gram-positive rods, and the antibiotics were showing ineffective. The CT showed the liver tumor had grown significantly in the last few weeks. Grown into and compressed the main bile ducts and nearly all the liver. Tom and I had discussed on many occasions his future and was educated and thoughtful in his decisions. He was in the driver’s seat until he told the palliative doctor he was too weak to sign the paper and “have my brother do it, he’s the Dope”. He was joking to the last moment referring to the DPOA-HC which I was. Doctors say if they have a choice there are two cancers to get Brain and Liver, both are a “Soft Death” meaning relatively painless, and the patient just wants to sleep till the body succumbs.

As of 10:00am PT on September 22, 2022 – Tom is comfortable, unresponsive (pupils), on 10mg/hr Morphine and “napping”.

Tom was popular with the Internet community, for sure. Collectively, Tom is followed by over 10,016 people. If you want to see more of who he is, I invite you to follow the links to his accounts. Money collected will go the use of collecting and interviewing toms providers as to what could have been done better. Money will be used to pay cash for Doctor's appointments, Research materials, tools for gathering Laboratory samples.