Metastatic liver cancer

Another Liver Cancer story we received in our call for "Do
you have a liver cancer story". Thanks Kaye for sharing Kim’s liver cancer story. All our love and hugs. Please leave a comment and show Kaye your support!

For those new in liver cancer, Kaye’s story just like father’s metastatic liver cancer story tells you:

• there is an invisible killer amongst us that even the medical world cannot pinpoint on time…
• lots of doctors ignore red flags that should point to further analyses and could point to an early detection of cancer (why we have all these medical facilities and people, when they are just under used???, don’t say it’s too expensive: nothing compares with the billions wasted in Iraq…)

For those that have a loved one with cancer in palliative care

• … shocked and still in disbelief at the rapid decline and death of my beautiful soulmate…
• … the palliative care nurses came to our home like angels in the night and without them my husband and I would not have been afforded the dignity and our wish for him to remain with us till the end …
• … some things you don’t tell to even your most beloved one …

Liver cancer prognosis

Some of you might say: I have heard liver cancer stories where the cancer patient still lives on for 2 years after being diagnosed with liver cancer.

This is true, but most likely because the liver cancer was diagnosed in its very early stage.

In Kim’s story below they did notice "red spots" 18 months ago…

Symptoms of liver cancer

In Kim’s story we read some extra symptoms we never noticed with father’s metastatic liver cancer… We also learned from mother that father once told her "he had something on his mind he couldn’t tell her…".

Both:

• recognizing symptoms early and
• talking about

can let your life turn into another direction…

BUT:

why is there no talk about cancer prevention???

We are still looking forward for any politician who puts cancer prevention on the agenda…
Or in other words: who puts a healthy lifestyle on top of the agenda…

Better be safe than sorry is extremely true when it comes to cancer…

Kim’s liver cancer story

My husband, aged 49, died of liver cancer on the 5 March 2008.

He went for a employment medical in mid February2008 and the doctor noticed some red spots on his upper body. (other doctors had ignored this earlier) These had been around for about 18 months and we had put them down to burst blood capillaries that his dad has too.

The doctor felt his liver and said it was enlarged and referred him for an ultrasound & blood test

The results we received on the week preceding the 18th Feb were good news in that the diagnosis was benign growths and he had Hep C. (My husband was an ambulance office early in his career & this may have been the point of infection)

His concern was for me however & I tested negative for Hep C on the 19th and the doctor referred my husband to a clinic to treat his Hep C.

At the referred clinic appointment on the 21 Feb the doctor said my husband needed urgent blood test and cT scan. The bloods were taken that afternoon and the CT scan was performed the next day on the 22nd Feb.

My husband went into the scan appearing and feeling well and the moment he came out he complained of a sore shoulder which he thought was from laying in the machine with his arms above his head.

By that night he was in extreme pain and by the 23 Feb afternoon I took him to the local hospital emergency to get some relief.

The pain did not subside and on the 24 Feb he started to hiccup and did not stop. We again went to the local hospital emergency as the hiccups were interfering with his breathing and he was becoming very exhausted.

More pain relief coupled with valium were prescribed to relax his diaphragm. My husband was not to happy to be drugged so much and I was becoming increasingly concerned about him.

On the 25th February (Monday morning) I rang the clinic and pleaded with them to see my husband as I KNEW there was something really wrong and his face was very sick looking.

We were advised to come through the clinic’s hospital emergency and after waiting a number of hours (while my husband continued to hiccup) a registrar from the clinic came to see him. She said that the hiccup and shoulder pain were part and parcel of the “advanced aggressive liver cancer” that my husband had.

We were flabbergasted/stunned/shocked/crying and said that this was the first we had heard of CANCER . The registrar explained that there was no available treatment and requested that we keep the appointment we were meant to get the ct results at for the following Thursday (28th February) to discuss palliative care.

We returned home and Kim and I decided not to tell anyone in the near future to let ourselves digest the prospects.

That night I googled liver cancer + hiccups and some site referred to this symptom as the ‘final stages’. I shut the computer down and didn’t tell my husband this.

In the meantime the shoulder pain and the hiccups continued into the 27th and by lunchtime the drugs prescribed over the weekend by the emergency doctors at our visits rendered my husband bombed out and he stopped breathing.

I called his GP in a mad panic and shook him to life and called an ambulance.

I called all our kids and my husbands family. we became inundated with visitors.

The doctors asked if my husband wanted to stay in hospital and all we wanted to do was get home which we did.

We went along to the scheduled Thursday appointment at the clinic and the doctor told us my husband had about 2 months to live. We cried all the way home in the car.

Thursday night and the pain increased and I got on the phone to palliative services in desperation on the 29th and with the help of the clinic urging them to come they visited us at home that day.

The nurse took one look at my husband …organised better meds for pain relief and told us she thought he had a week or 2 left at best.

A morphine pump was fitted to Kim on Saturday the 1st March.

He was given steroids which lifted him on the 2nd and 3rd.

On the evening of the 4th after much love amongst us all and the kids we went to bed and he started to die before my eyes.

He died on the 5th at around 10.45 in the morning.

I am shocked and still in disbelief at the rapid decline and death of my beautiful soulmate.

I believe the contrast that my husband drank for the CT scan blew his cancer and symptoms up and hastened his death. Only consolation is that this may have shortened the time he was in pain.

On reflection symptoms of lethargy were around about 18 months beforehand that we put down to his dislike of his job ( which he changed and worked hard at his new job)

He also went thru bout of itching about 18 months prior to his death.

The palliative care nurses came to our home like angels in the night and without them my husband and I would not have been afforded the dignity and our wish for him to remain with us till the end.

Do you have a liver cancer story? Leave a comment and share your cancer story with us: it’s a relief to know that other people have lived the same ordeal and that don’t have any judgments about the things you did and didn’t do…

Technorati Tags: CANCER STORIES, Liver Cancer, liver cancer prognosis, liver cancer story, Metastatic Liver Cancer, symptoms of liver cancer

1997: Singer Lawrence Payton of the Four Tops died of primary liver cancer in Detroit. He was only 59.

Read our clear information about treatments, symptoms, prognosis, primary and secondary liver cancer.

Technorati Tags: four tops, lawrence payton, Liver Cancer, primary liver cancer, prognosis, Secondary liver cancer

Find all cancer words clearly explained here. We know: it drives you mad all these terms: why can’t doctors speak propper English when you have liver cancer?

Medical Liver Cancer Glossary

Use our alphabetical glossary or find the most used cancer terms further below.

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M

N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

Most common terms used when a person has liver cancer:

• 5 FU : 5-fluorouracil : the anticancer drug father would have been given by the oncologist when father would have agreed. Father’s answer was more in the sense of: 5FU? F… you!
• Abdominal pain: Any pain in the belly (the abdomen). The following organs can cause pain: stomach, small intestine, colon, liver, gallbladder, and pancreas. Father’s belly pain was caused by a growing liver that was pushing against all other organs.

• Ablation: Another word for removal or excision. Ablation is usually carried out surgically but there are many other advanced ablations.

• Adenocarcinoma: A cancer that develops in the lining or inner surface of an organ. Father’s cancer was also an adenocarcinoma. Of course it is important to know which specific organ is causing the cancer.

• Benign: Not cancer. Not malignant. Not "too bad". A benign tumor does not invade surrounding tissue or spread to other parts of the body. A benign tumor may grow but it stays in the same place.
  

• Biopsy: The removal of a sample of tissue for purposes of diagnosis.

• Cancer: An abnormal growth of cells which tend to proliferate in an uncontrolled way and, in some cases, to metastasize (spread). Father’s cancer had spread to his liver and therefore was called: metastatic liver cancer.

• Carcinoma: Cancer that begins in the skin or in tissues that line or cover body organs. For example, carcinoma can arise in the breast , colon, liver, lung, prostate, or stomach.

• Catheter: A thin, flexible tube . For example, a catheter placed in a vein provides a pathway for giving drugs, nutrients, fluids, or blood products.
  Samples of blood can also be withdrawn through the catheter.

• CT scan: Computerized tomography scan. Pictures of structures within the body created by a computer that takes the data from multiple X-ray images and turns them into pictures on a screen. CT stands for Computerized Tomography.
  

• Differentiation:
   
• 1 The process by which cells become progressively more specialized; a normal process through which cells mature. This process of specialization for the cell comes at the expense of its breadth of potential. Stem cells can, for example, differentiate into secretory cells in the intestine.
• 2 In cancer, differentiation refers to how mature (developed) the cancer cells are in a tumor. Differentiated tumor cells resemble normal cells and tend to grow and spread at a slower rate than undifferentiated or poorly differentiated tumor cells, which lack the structure and function of normal cells and grow uncontrollably.

  Father’s metastatic liver cancer was undifferentiated unfortunately.

• Hepatic: Having to do with the liver.

• Hepatic artery: An artery that distributes blood to the liver, pancreas and gallbladder as well as to the stomach and duodenal portion of the small intestine.

• Hepatocellular carcinoma: A tumor in which the cancer starts during adulthood in cells in the liver . Also called adult primary liver cancer.
  

• Hepatoma: Cancer originating in the liver, in liver cells. More often called hepatocarcinoma or hepatocellular carcinoma.

• Jaundice: Yellow staining of the skin and sclerae (the whites of the eyes) by abnormally high blood levels of the bile pigment bilirubin . The yellowing extends to other tissues and body fluids. Although father had liver cancer, he never had jaundice.

• Liver: the organ in the upper abdomen that aids in digestion and removes waste products and worn-out cells from the blood.
  The liver is the largest solid organ in the body. The liver weighs about three and a half pounds (1.6 kilograms). It measures about 8 inches (20 cm) horizontally (across) and 6.5 inches (17 cm) vertically (down) and is 4.5 inches (12 cm) thick. Read more in: Where is your liver.

• Lymph: An almost colorless fluid that travels through vessels called lymphatics in the lymphatic system and carries cells that help fight infections and diseases.

• MRI scan - Magnetic Resonance Imaging : A special radiology technique designed to image internal structures of the body using magnetism, radio waves, and a computer to produce the images of body structures. In magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the scanner is a tube surrounded by a giant circular magnet. The patient is placed on a moveable bed that is inserted into the magnet. The magnet creates a strong magnetic field that aligns the protons of hydrogen atoms, which are then exposed to a beam of radio waves. This spins the various protons of the body, and they produce a faint signal that is detected by the receiver portion of the MRI scanner. A computer processes the receiver information, and an image is produced. The image and resolution is quite detailed and can detect tiny changes of structures within the body, particularly in the soft tissue, brain and spinal cord, abdomen and joints.

• Malignant: Bad. In regard to a tumor, having the properties of a malignancy that can invade and destroy nearby tissue and that may spread (metastasize) to other parts of the body.

• Metastasis:
   
• 1. The process by which cancer spreads from the place at which it first arose as a primary tumor to distant locations in the body.
• 2. The cancer resulting from the spread of the primary tumor. For example, someone with melanoma may have a metastasis in their brain. And a person with colon cancer may, fortunately, show no metastases.

• Oncologist: A physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer .

• Palliative treatment: When the medical world has no real cure… To palliate a disease is to treat it partially and insofar as possible, but not cure it completely. Palliation cloaks a disease. Also sometimes called symptomatic treatment. It’s here where they tend to use the term "Quality of Life" frequently.

• Prognosis:
   
• 1. The expected course of a disease .
• 2. The patient’s chance of recovery.

  The prognosis predicts the outcome of a disease and therefore the future for the patient .

• Radiofrequency ablation: The use of electrodes to generate heat and destroy abnormal tissue.

• Recurrence: The return of a sign, symptom or disease after a remission. The reappearance of cancer cells at the same site or in another location is, unfortunately, a familiar form of recurrence.

• Remission: The state of absence of disease activity in patients with known chronic illness. It is commonly used to refer to absence of active cancer.

• Resection: Surgical removal of part of an organ.

• Serum: The clear liquid that can be separated from clotted blood. Serum differs from plasma, the liquid portion of normal unclotted blood containing the red and white cells and platelets. It is the clot that makes the difference between serum and plasma.

• Staging: In regard to cancer, the process of doing examinations and tests to learn the extent of the cancer, especially whether it has metastasized (spread) from its original site to other parts of the body. Read more about Stage 4 liver cancer.

• Tumor: An abnormal mass of tissue. Tumors are a classic sign of inflammation, and can be benign or malignant (cancerous). There are dozens of different types of tumors. Their names usually reflect the kind of tissue they arise in, and may also tell you something about their shape or how they grow. For example, a medulloblastoma is a tumor that arises from embryonic cells (a blastoma) in the inner part of the brain (the medulla). Diagnosis depends on the type and location of the tumor. Tumor marker tests and imaging may be used; some tumors can be seen (for example, tumors on the exterior of the skin) or felt (palpated with the hands).

• X-ray:
   
• 1. High-energy radiation with waves shorter than those of visible light. X-rays possess the properties of penetrating most substances (to varying extents), of acting on a photographic film or plate (permitting radiography), and of causing a fluorescent screen to give off light (permitting fluoroscopy). In low doses X-rays are used for making images that help to diagnose disease, and in high doses to treat cancer . Formerly called a Roentgen ray.
• 2. An image obtained by means of X-rays.

 

Leave a comment:

when we didn’t explain the terms well enough
when the cancer term you are looking for is not yet included in our list.

Please leave a comment to make this liver cancer glossary as clear as possible.

Technorati Tags: alphabetical glossary, cancer glossary, cancer terms, cancer words, doctors, Liver Cancer