Metastatic liver cancer

Trish, one of our 2 metastatic liver cancer survivors has some questions for Dan - our other metastatic liver cancer survivor-.

 

Trish: recommended readings about cancer and cancer stages:

 

• colon cancer stages: an overview from Stage 0 cancer to Stage IV cancer
   

• Stages of throat cancer: a clear overview of 2 different ways of identifying or "staging" a cancer with clear huge pictures of throat cancer stages
   

• colon cancer staging: why staging is important: the size of your tumor doesn’t show the whole disease (father had an unknown primary cancer, meaning the size of his primary tumor was so small it couldn’t be detected). 
   
• liver cancer survival rate
   
• Stage 4 liver cancer

 

I have the following questions for both Dan and Trish…

 

… questions also for anybody else who wants to join in!

 

1. how did you first react when you heard that you had secondary liver cancer?
    
2. who did you inform about your secondary liver cancer?
    
3. how did you inform your loved ones?
    
4. which people didn’t you inform about your cancer and why?
    
5. how do you manage to keep on fighting the disease?

 

For my father who died of metastatic liver cancer, the answers would be like this:

 

1. mom says that a year or so before father got diagnosed with secondary liver cancer he said he had a problem he couldn’t talk with mom about…

   At the moment of his diagnosis there were tears in father’s eyes and from that moment on whenever you asked him how he felt, he would answer something like "human"…
    

2. father was diagnosed when mom and 1 son where at his side. The rest of his children were informed by mom.
    
3.  father never informed anybody.
    
4. only mom and we did inform others, only to our loved ones or to the people of palliative care, health insurance and the kind
    
5. father gave up fighting the disease when the doctor told him there was no sure way to predict that chemotherapy would cure his cancer.

 

Trish’ comment and questions for Dan

 

Read their full survival stories and this comment at : Meet Dan: our second metastatic liver cancer survivor

 

Hi Dan,

 

I’ll get to your 31 months, no problem.

 

It’s so good to hear another person
doing so well, it gives me so much hope.

 

Last time I left a message, I had just had a CT scan, stupidly 2 weeks before I was to see the doctor, did my mind go crazy, I wanted to start smoking again, I dreamt my tumours got bigger, almost got depressed, it was all I focused on.

 

When I visited my doctor, he said my results were good, I’d had another shrinkage, and he tugged at my hair and said “I don’t know why you still have hair”.

 

I walked out of the room onto a cloud, all those awful feelings and urges gone, and I thought to myself, if I can puzzle him with my hair, maybe I can puzzle him with the lose of my cancer. I can dream.

 

Dan, what does stage IV mean?

 

Is there a kinder chemotherapy than the 2 you mentioned?

 

And how come you lost so much weight, I’m the heaviest now than I have been in my whole life, I joined a gym 2 months ago, have only been once, I shall motivate myself to go now.

 

I will go tomorrow before I come to work, last time I did it I was tired for 2 days, I suppose that could be because I’m unfit? Yep.

Gotta go,

Trish

Technorati Tags: cancer stages, cancer survivor, chemotherapy, dan, liver cancer survivors, Metastatic Liver Cancer, Secondary liver cancer, stage 4 cancer, stages of throat cancer, throat cancer, trish

 

Heather feels "she is doing it alone" in her comment at Metastatic liver cancer facts : secondary liver cancer.

 

That’s why we have our metastatic liver cancer site so everybody can share their experience and feelings with others:

 

to walk the path of secondary liver cancer together…

 

We ask all our readers: please leave a comment so

 

Heather doesn’t have to walk her path on her own.

 

Why do we feel like walking the cancer path alone?

 

Unfortunately cancer keeps a taboo, too much media focuses on "heroic" cancer survivors and people lack the education to deal with palliative care:

 

• There are people who just shy away and don’t even dare to come near to a cancer patient.
   

• Then there are the "always helpful people" that have no clue. No clue about the dark and messy situation a terminal cancer patient and his loved ones are dragged into. But when these people are open to listen to you, they could be your best help. Because you need to understand: you need all the hands you can get when taking care of a metastatic liver cancer patient.
   
• Then there are the people who don’t even have a clue that you need help.  

 

The cancer patient doesn’t want to bother others…

 

• Heather’s father feels he does not want to burden Heather’s family.
   
• Our father answered to my question:
  "what can I do for you father?"
  … Nothing special, just do like normal what you are doing…

 

Unfortunately this "nothing special" or "don’t bother about me" makes palliative care more difficult than it should. I mean: if father says exactly what we can do to make his life better, than we could just do it, problem solved.

 

On the other hand, I can imagine father really didn’t want to get "special treatment" or more attention than usual. So keep in mind that:

 

"do what you always have been doing"
could really be the guideline for your palliative care.

 

We added another guideline: making sure father didn’t have too much pain to handle during his last months of his life.

 

Fathers are men… and men won’t talk that much about how they feel. Men especially don’t feel like talking…

 

• about being sick nor
   
• about how much pain they feel…

 

Is his liver is worse then he is letting on to believe?

 

Heather asks further whether her father’s liver is worse then he is letting on to believe?

 

The answer is crude:

 

his liver is getting worse each and every day,
there is nothing much to hide there.

 

Pain is something that you cannot hide: I agree some people have a bigger pain-tolerance than others, but sooner or later, an enlarging liver will press too much on the other organs.

 

Will you have less time than you are hoping to have?

 

I cannot answer that question for you. I can only say I would have loved to have spend more time with my father than I did.

 

When doctors say the cancer patient has only so much time to live, then I suggest you organize your life shared with the cancer patient in that way. Hope for the best but prepare and organize yourself for the shortest prognosis.

 

Like they say: "live like it is your last day together"…

 

Self medicating…

 

Heather says her father:

 

• said no to chemotherapy
   
• does self medications with adjusting his food intake
   
• already lost one kidney

 

Now her father says he can no longer eat protein.

 

I suggest you ask your doctor and your father what exactly the meaning is of "cannot eat protein".

 

Our first reaction was to put father on a diet that would spare his liver. But no diet would cure father. And "quality of life" has little meaning when you can’t eat what you love. So we kept on buying father’s special treat (see New metastatic liver cancer treatment: chocolate?), which was all but "liver-friendly".

 

We did see an evolution in father eating his beloved food from:

 

• first eating all he loved but keeping his "fat, beer and chocolate" portions small not to burden his liver too much
   
• later on eating less because there wasn’t enough space in his abdomen to accommodate a bigger food intake during each serving
   
• later on eating less because his appetite just became less
   
• later on adding "astronaut" liquid food to his diet (drinks from the pharmacy containing lots of nutrition) to have some nutrition after all

 

Father’s digestion system slowly but surely wasn’t able anymore to absorb all the water from his food so his feet and later on his legs became more swollen due to water-accumulation there.

 

Our uncle had kidney cancer. His water accumulation in his feet and legs became more alarming than father, so he had to return to hospital to - as far as I understand it - get drained in the hospital.

 

Alarming means that the water reaches higher than the legs, so you need to monitor that.

 

Read Heather’s cancer story and leave a comment!

 

I have a question.

 

My father has secondary liver cancer.

 

It derived from testicular cancer that was not found in time after a year and a half complaining to doctors. The cancer sack broke and the cancer seeds went up.

 

Therefore, he got liver cancer as well as prostate, bladder, both kidneys (one which was lost).

 

He is talking very little about how things are going and he is doing self medications with adjusting his food intake.

 

He has said no to chemotherapy.

 

My question is that the other day he had mentioned that he can no longer eat protein.

 

Does this mean his liver is worse then he is letting on to believe, and that I will have less time then I am hoping to have?

 

I would appreciate if you could help. I feel like I am doing this alone. My father feels he does not want to burden us. But I need to know.

 

Thank you for your time

 

Heather

Technorati Tags: CANCER STORIES, Metastatic Liver Cancer, Secondary liver cancer

We were asked to give a metastatic liver cancer prognosis to Padmanabhan who told his kidney cancer story in a comment at Liver Cancer Prognosis.

 

Padmanabhan’s doctors found a tumor in his liver and Padmanabhan wants to know whether it’s a metastatic liver cancer or just a liver tumor.

 

You should ask your doctor to answer your questions. For what I know is that a liver biopsy could tell you whether your cancer is primary or secondary. But you need to know that father’s liver biopsy only resulted in the knowledge of having a secondary liver cancer with unknown primary.

 

There is no need for guessing and asking around on the Internet, not even on our metastatic liver cancer site. In your case you have to get your answer from the medical world based on facts and examinations.

 

Once doctors have diagnosed what kind of cancer or tumor you have in your liver, they can inform you about which cancer treatments you can undergo, what your options are and what your prognosis will be.

 

All we can do on this website is:

 

• tell you we only have one metastatic liver cancer survivor and
   
• share with you the journey that metastatic liver cancer patients and their loved ones have walked already

 

So please ask your doctors why they don’t do a liver biopsy and do get a second opinion from doctors in a hospital that’s well known for dealing with the kind of tumor you are having.

 

Padmanabhan kidney cancer story

 

I was diagnosed with kidney cancer last year in the month of march in a routine master check up and got the right kidney removed.

 

It was a localised one and
the biopsy has shown it as a grade 2 rcc.

 

After a year now when I went for a routine scanning it was found that in the liver there is a focal lesion [hyperechoic] with a size of 1.8 cm.

 

One doctor felt that it would be a haemangioma (a benign tumour composed of dilated blood vessels) but the other one wants to check whether it is a metastatic one.

 

They want me to do an MRI scan with contrast.

 

But unfortunately I have little higher creatinine level which suggests that after this contrast test, the functioning of the kidney might get affected further.

 

I want to know whether it is a metastatic one, how much is the chance of it being as a liver cancer, what are the chances that it might affect my health.

 

How can it be cured what are the percentage chances.

 

How long it takes to cure.

Make sure all medical examinations that can be done in a reasonable matter are done before wondering about your metastatic liver cancer prognosis.

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