Our appointment today with the thoracic surgeon at Cedars went well. He would like to see one more MRI, but he believes that he can remove the tumor. It would be a big surgery, including sternotomy (opening of the chest) and likely Scott being put on cardiac bypass during the procedure.

Yesterday, we had a repeat CT scan to see if the tumor had shrunk. While we have not yet talked about the scan with our oncologist, the thoracic surgeon said the tumor looked unchanged. Chemotherapy doesn't generally work on carcinoid tumors, so we were not terribly surprised by this news. We will meet with the oncologist Thursday and hopefully find out how we should proceed.

We like the thoracic surgeon, and he seems like the right guy for the job. He has done three surgeries of this type and all of the patients are alive. This type of carcinoid is so rare that to find a doctor who has done any surgeries on a thymic carcinoid is not easy. He has also done many surgeries on lung carcinoids so he is accustomed to dealing with this type of tumor. That's the good news. The bad news is that we will have to jump through some insurance hoops before the surgery can be done. All last week, we were on the phone and writing emails appealing the insurance company's denial to see the Cedars surgeon. We saw him today on our own dime (actually, on my brother's dime, since Chris slapped down his credit card with lightning speed--thanks, Chris). After our cardiologist went to bat for us, the insurance company approved a referral to a UCSD thoracic surgeon. We will meet with him on Friday. The UCSD guy seems like a pretty amazing surgeon, but carcinoid tumors are not his specialty, so it is our hope that he will turn us down and we can get our referral for the Cedars surgeon.

Other than that, we had a nice last couple of weekends. My brother Chris and our nephew Nicolas visited us two weekends ago, and our good friend Jeremy drove his hippie bus from Santa Cruz and camped out in our driveway this last weekend. Maz loved going out to the bus for hot cocoa and almond butter and jam tortillas. And Jeremy made me the best cup of coffee I've ever had. So fun to sit in the van, drink a cup of coffee and forget for a second how much this situation sucks. Jer also took some great photos of our favorite beaches.

Nicolas and Maz

The photo above is one of my favorites. And Jeremy wrote a classic caption for it: "I guess that makes me Jesse Pinkman. Our synthesis: Good freaking coffee!"