Whitney’s father is diagnosed with liver cancer stage 4 and asks our metastatic liver cancer survivors for advice. Eating more small portions a day is a smart practical solution to deal with an expanding liver.
What does liver cancer stage 4 mean exactly?
You have to ask your doctor to explain that sentence, as it can be quite confusing but utterly important for the treatment of the cancer:
- Stage iv colon cancer means you have cancer that started in the colon that has metastasized or moved to other organs like most commonly the liver.
- Stage iv breast cancer means you have cancer that started in the colon that has metastasized or moved to other organs like most commonly bones, liver, or lung.
- Stage iv liver cancer means you have cancer that started in the liver.
When I read Whitney saying that doctors are eliminating places where the cancer started, I would conclude your dad has secondary or metastatic liver cancer, or: Stage iv dunnoyetwhich cancer.
What to do when you have metastatic liver cancer?
When doctors notice a cancer in the liver, they will take a biopsy to find out what kind of cancer they are dealing with.
Most importantly they want to know if they are dealing with a real liver cancer or with an other cancer that has now spread to the liver.
In my father’s case, his liver biopsy wasn’t conclusive to where his liver cancer started so it got diagnosed as :
metastatic liver cancer of unknown primary.
Cancer treatment options
Cancer treatment options are roughly determined by :
- where the cancer started : a prostate cancer will get typical treatments for prostate cancer which are different than a treatment for lung cancer
- the size and number of the cancer(s)
- whether the cancer has spread or not
In case of a liver cancer, it is therefore important to find out if this cancer is an “original liver cancer” or a cancer that originated somewhere else in the body and now starts damaging the liver.
The most optimistic outcome in my opinion is having a primary liver cancer.
After that, the most optimistic diagnosis is one when doctors can pinpoint where the primary cancer originated from.
Once diagnosed, you will be offered some cancer treatment options. Most likely only the cancer treatment options available in your current hospital will be mentioned. Ask if there are other possible cancer treatments elsewhere.
If you opt for any treatment, you need to inform yourself about the side-effects.
Your doctor has to be your friend. In our case father’s general practician was the one that could listen to our feelings, read father’s body language and give a suggestion accordingly.
Doctor’s and specialists in the hospital are logically more distant, less personal and could really say crude things like:
- we are on the good road (that gave us a tremendous amount of false hope). She meant she was on the road to make a cancer diagnosis going through one option after the other.
- stop looking for cures on the Internet, your father is dying (that was a shocker, utterly untactful but also a wake up call that there is a high possibility that he is right, so that prepared us for the urgent measures that had to be taken: organising hospice and palliative care).
The latter specialist, although blunt, also told us:
It’s ‘easy’ for me to say your father has cancer, but I only have to deal with that inside my white walls of my hospital. You guys will have to figure out how to deal with cancer at home, and I can’t help you at home.
You are always welcome to come back to the hospital as we do have a palliative room.
But I advice you for he quality of your father’s life: keep him out of the hospital if you can.
Summarized: you need to gather as much information as possible to make a decision.
Your father will be the ultimate decision maker, but we have been told by our GP that like in normal life, there is nothing wrong with trying to persuade a person for something you think is the right thing to do.
Just remember: he used the term “persuade” not “order”, the ultimate decision is your father’s decision.
Whitney’s father is just diagnosed with liver cancer
Commented at : Meet Dan: our second metastatic liver cancer survivor
I want to say thank you for sharing your story.
My dad has liver cancer. We just found out 4 days ago.
They are just starting to eliminate possible places that it started. He is in stage four so he is beginning to get more and more tired and weak.
If you have any advice for him to stay strong I would love it and so would her.
He currently works on the bike 10 min two times a day and have been eating more small meals which really seems to be allowing him to eat more in the day.
We have a wonderful doctor who promised to fight till we wanted to stop.
We have faith that God knows what he is doing, his plan is more than we could ever dream.
Seeing that the both of you [metastatic liver cancer survivors] have made it this far really brightens my day.
I have hope that he will be able to walk me down the isle , well when ever that day comes.
If either of you have any tips please let me know. Its wonderful to see the both of you making it this far I hope the best for you and your families.
Whitney