As far as I remember, "undifferentiated adenocarcinoma metastatic liver cancer unknown primary" was father’s diagnosis.
I only got alarmed after the 5th word when it said:
cancer.
When I then saw father’s liver looking like a raisin bread over-generously filled with raisons…
Unfortunately in father’s case, these raisins were malignant tumors, so surgery nor any other kind of more advance tumor treatments became an option.
Then the doctors were fast enough to explain that metastatic was another term for mentioning that there was a second cancer somewhere in father’s body that caused his liver cancer. And if a miracle could treat the cancers inside father’s liver, we still needed to cure the primary cancer.
16 months after father passed away from metastatic liver cancer…
16 months have passed by now, and "cancer" is still part of my thinking process each and every day. I recently thought the universe was trying to tell me to gather more cancer stories, so I started a few days ago the following blogs about:
- bladder cancer
- pancreatic cancer (yes, the cancer actor Patrick Swayze is dealing with, and Patrick Swayze not being death yet is one of the rare celebrities to come forward with his cancer story!, unlike Yves Saint Laurent who died today battling a not mentioned disease)
- stomach cancer
- and maybe the most preventable of all cancers: throat cancer, if we just stopped smoking or putting other things in our mouth: those things our mouths were never designed for…
But still my mind kept on twisting and turning until today I read about metastatic stomach cancer:
"a stomach cancer that spreads to the liver, will still look like a stomach cancer."
Now that sounds as logical as it comes, doesn’t it?
That’s were I remember telling my father that the oncologist tried to explain him why they were looking for the type of cancer father was having.
So I told father: imagine your cancer is a meatball, then they are trying to find out whether it’s a pork meatball or a chicken meatball… For all the info we were overwhelmed with, only now I get the message: if they would have know what kind of cancer father had in his liver, then they would have known where his primary cancer was…
In other words: in stead of unknown primary, they would have been able to be more precise.
And that explains why they were calling the cancer "Undifferentiated". If they would have called it "dunno where it comes from", they could have saved me 16 months of trying to put the puzzle back together…
I can hear you saying: but they told you it was an unknown primary!
Agreed, but then they should have said :
- unknown primary OR
- undifferentiated
Keep it short and simple as life becomes way too difficult already the first time you hear the word cancer!
And no: I don’t need a "better next time" : once is enough and actually once too many if most likely cancer is just a consequence of living in a polluted world…