Hi all, It's been a minute since the last post from Alicia, so thought I would drop in a quick update. I'm about 2.5 weeks post-surgery now and recovering well. As Alicia mentioned, the surgery went well with no surprises. There were the expected side effects of a major surgery, with mostly just pain as the thing to manage. But, for the most part, that has dissipated in the last 4-5 days. I still have some discomfort, which is to be expected. And I get pretty fatigued a coupl

Pre-surgery Greetings from St. David's Hospital in downtown Austin! This is Alicia, Matt's sister, and though he's up and visiting he's not up to writing one of his eloquent posts quite yet. There have been so many people who have asked for an update we thought this is the best way to reach the most friends. Stacey and Matt got to the hospital bright and really early at 5:30 this morning. He went back for surgery around 7:30 and was out after about an hour and half. His recov

Hi there. Hope this finds you and yours doing well as we move into spring. We are actually in that short window of spring in Austin before the summer heat descends on us. Temps are great so getting to spend a lot of time outside...which always does me right. And we could certainly use a little rain - it's dry as hell around here. Just writing that feels like one more confirmation I'm becoming my Dad as I measure rainfall. Anyhooo.... Been a minute since a health update and de

Howdy all. It was a chemo day for me today, so I got loaded up with the usual sauce. I felt pretty good for most of last week, and again felt strong headed into today’s chemo. Good stuff. Prior to chemo, I met with the oncologist this morning, and we were able to discuss the results of my midpoint CT scan from last Thursday. In summary…GOOD NEWS! There are no new lesions/tumors anywhere in the lungs or liver, which is a good sign. The already tiny spots on the lungs were even

Hi there, I hope this finds you and your crew doing well! It's been a bit since I shared along an update, so sharing along the latest. I was able, with that additional week of rest, to get chemo #5 on 1/27. Our house got hit with the same virus/flu/Covid whatever that seems to be making the rounds, and I think my body just needed more time to heal up. As my oncologist pointed out...we are not just treating cancer, we are treating my body. Looking back on the last two weeks, C

Hi there. Just a quick update to pass along! I was scheduled to have chemo on Monday, after postponing it before due to a respiratory/viral infection that was lingering. Well, as it turned out, my body needed a bit more time to heal. My neutrophil (a type of white blood cell) count was too low to proceed with chemo without putting too much stress on my system. So we have postponed again to Monday of next week. I'm working to not think too much about it and just roll with thin

Hello all, Happy New Year to you and your crew, and hope this finds you each doing well. Just a quick update... We elected to postpone today's chemo until next Monday based on a lingering respiratory infection. This all started up before Christmas as either the flu or Covid, and then settled in as a respiratory infection. I went ahead with chemo on New Year's Eve while in the middle of that, and it really knocked me down pretty good. So we decided to move the chemo back so I

Hi all, Hard to believe it's almost the end of the year already. Christmas in a few days? Geez. So far, we have knocked out 3 chemo sessions, and definitely a team effort. We have also moved more fully into the functional medicine work too, which is certainly involved. While the oncology is meant to slow, stop, and ultimately eliminate the cancer cells, our functional medicine work is designed to improve the capacity of my body to heal itself at a cellular level. (That's the

Hope you and your families enjoyed a great Thanksgiving day! In spending a little bit more time on Facebook recently, I've enjoyed seeing all the pics from your various dinners. One more chemo down! Assuming the plan of 6 months of chemo, that has me somewhere around 1/6th of the way. I'll take it. Overall, this one just felt much more manageable. I was exhausted in every way in the rush leading up to the first chemo, so it was better to go into this second one more rested ph

Chemo selfie First chemo infusion done! I went in last Monday (a week ago), and it takes around four hours for the process. And we learned a lot with this one. On the positive side, nausea was never much of an issue which was a welcome experience. I know that can evolve over time from my last go at this, but feels like we kept that at bay. And I've been getting in walks every day, increasingly longer, even if a little foggy headed. While the anti-nausea drugs worked, they als

Pre-surgery fashion Hi all, Thanks so much for all the love, support, prayers and well wishes. We definitely are lifted so much by those, and I'm, again, reminded about the strength found in community. And we are so, so grateful to be part of such wonderful communities. This past week has been busy trying to get things done so that we could meet the scheduled chemotherapy start on Monday. And I think we've done it! The PET scan on Monday confirmed the course of treatment, hig

Hi all, Just wanted to share along a health update as there's been a lot of things that have happened in the last two weeks. I've caught up with some of you on bits and pieces of this, and thought Caring Bridge might be a place where I could more easily update folks all at once. Two years ago, I found out I had colon cancer through a routine colonoscopy (PSA - get your colonoscopy done if you are overdue!). I had a colon resection shortly after and have worked on recovery sin

Greetings from Austin! I'm sitting here in Matt's and Stacey's kitchen to send this update. Matt was able to come home from the hospital on Sunday night and is just glad to be where it's quiet and where someone isn't coming in the room every couple of hours. Yesterday they called with his pathology reports, and.... there was NO evidence of cancer spread, the margins were clean, the cancer was contained to the tumor itself, and ALL 47 lymph nodes they'd taken out during surger

Matt had his colon resection surgery today, and all went as planned. He's at the hospital for at least a couple of nights but is recuperating well so far. For the last several weeks, he has been feeling great. After all the initial tests and labs, including some genetic testing our whole family might benefit from, he's been just spending time with family and trying to get loose ends tied up at work in preparation for today. The surgery started after lunchtime and lasted a lo

For those of you I haven't met, I'm Alicia, Matt's older sister. I can think of no one I'd be more proud to call my brother. I've offered to help share his cancer journey through this website to hopefully take a little something off his and Stacey's plates during this chaotic time. September just wasn't a great month for the Thompson family. On Tuesday the 13th our mom had a radical open hysterectomy and was diagnosed with uterine/endometrial cancer that had spread to one Fa