I guess one of the hardest things for me to deal with is that last August my mom was going to the doctor to discuss the medication she was taking for her ulcer. It didn't seem to be helping her stomach pain at all and she was hoping he would have something that would. Well, when he saw her, he mentioned that she seemed to have a slight yellowish tinge to her skin, and started asking questions and decided to send her for blood work and a Cat Scan....all on the same day. He told us that he thought that she may have a gallstone. The following day she was told that there was indeed a gallstone and that it needed to be removed......So on August 23, 2010, we went to the hospital and she was to have a procedure where they remove it through her throat. We were so excited (silly us) to find out that she had a gallstone, because we figured that after it was removed her tummy would stop hurting......but when the surgeon came out to tell me how everything went....I was told that there was evidence of her ulcer (which had healed from the medicine she had been taking) but there was no gallstone and he felt with 95% certainty that what he had found was a very advanced case of "Bile Duct Cancer." And he said this without any type of medical proof to back it up......I can't begin to tell you the emotions, thought, questions, fears......When my mom woke up the doctor discusssed her options....but the prognosis was 6 months if she were lucky.
My sweet mom lived only 5 weeks from diagnosis.