From Excel to Word VBA, an exercise in frustration

I have a table with 2 columns with text-based drop-down lists. Here's an example of what I want to do: If I select "Likely" in column 1 and "Moderate" in column 2 (of row 1), it should return "Medium" in column 3 and set the background color to yellow (of row 1). In excel (vba), I'd verify both lists for the row have a value, do a lookup in a table, set the "value" for the cell using offsets and use conditional formatting on the cell.

Enter Word 2010. I'm aware of using the OnExit Event for content controls (no OnChange event?, that's pretty lame) and I understand that "bookmarks" are analogous to "named ranges" in Excel.

I've spent half a day and I'm spinning my wheels on this. Any general ideas on the best way to code this in Word? Between trying to reference the table, using bookmarks to add/delete text and formatting the table cells, I'm starting to pull my hair out.

Any help you can offer is appreciated.

Thanks for the detailed response Paul. I'll give it a whirl.