Small cell carcinoma of the lungs

What do you do when your oncologist gives you a small cell lung cancer prognosis of 6 months with chemotherapy and half as long without chemotherapy?

 

Gary wants to know. Please share your experience like we share ours.

 

Small cell lung cancer prognosis and secondary liver cancer

 

As far as I have experienced: as soon as doctors and oncologists hear "secondary liver cancer", they reason that:

 

• "with a normal effort" there is no cancer treatment.

 

We stress "with normal effort". With a huge extra effort and doing everything right, our few secondary cancer survivors are living proof that you can survive secondary liver cancer much longer than the prognosis done in your hospital.

 

If you want to go the "do everything right in order to cure cancer" Gary, it will always increase your mum’s quality of life as all our survivors have in common is:

 

• they believe there is a cure for their cancer
   
• they start eating food as healthy as possible – organic food
   
• they continue with conventional cancer treatment
   
• they do anything that can boost their immune system, hence beat the cancer better using alternative cancer treatments
   
• they relax more and eliminate stress
   
• they have a huge support group with lots of love.

 

Again: all the above will increase the quality of everybody’s life and as we see, it drastically prolonged the prognosis and life expectancy of our few metastatic liver cancer survivors.

 

Ask your doctors

 

Always ask as many doctors and try to find a doctor that can assist you with advice:

 

• out of his other own experience with cancer patients
   
• with an open mind to alternative treatments in the sense that : if it doesn’t harm, and it will improve quality of life, why not try it: prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

 

I repeat: I don’t advocate one miracle pill that can cure cancer, I notice that our few secondary liver cancer survivors "do everything right".

 

Metastatic liver cancer

 

Our father passed away due to the problems related to his secondary liver cancer. Meaning his liver was no more functioning well, his blood didn’t get "cleaned as it should".

 

You can compare father’s last 3 months symptoms to be closely related to a shipwrecked person in his rubber boat in the middle of the sea without water nor food.

 

Add to that the pain because his liver was growing and pushing against his internal organs.

 

You have to ask your doctors what is worse: the secondary liver cancer affecting the liver functions or the primary lung cancer. They will than be able to tell you what your mum most likely will go through.

 

Gary, please ask more questions because they will come with each new day.

 

Can we pre-plan for pain management

 

Pain management is in theory very easy: once you are in pain you take a pain killer. You need to know how long the pain killer works, because unlike with a "normal headache": the pain caused by a cancer that’s pressing on organs is permanent and will increase once the cancer increases.

 

With father we started with normal painkiller (paracetamol). When the pain become more, we had to give the paracetamol every 6 hours. That’s as you can imagine "difficult" when a person sleeps for 8 hours in a row. the good news is that when people are asleep, they don’t feel pain.

 

When the pain became larger than the painkiller could hide, we had to give a stronger painkiller: tramadol (your doctor and nurses will pre-scribe and dose it, although you will notice that you have to become a nurse yourself and follow your gut feeling).

 

When that became insufficient, then morphine patches were sticked on father’s skin (these are slow release pain killers, administered by the nurses).

 

One problem with painkiller: they cause constipation, so you have to monitor that and when needed take extra laxatives.

 

All in all the pain will increase and you have to increase your pain medication. Make sure you write down each and every time what you give to mum and how much.

 

Care giving

 

Care giving is something you need to organise as soon as possible, because there could be waiting lists. We did get a positive answer of a palliative nurse one year after father passed away, and my husband had to make his way through father’s healthcare system in a very aggressive way in order to get things organised on time.

 

All depends on your healthcare, your organisation skills and especially how many extra hands you can mobilize. We had the luck that mom has 2 retired sisters who did sleep over from time to time as the emotional and physical support in our case was overly needed.

 

Gary’s mum small cell lung cancer prognosis

 

Gary left this comment at Metastatic liver cancer facts : secondary liver cancer.

 

Hi,

 

My mum has Small cell carcinoma of the lungs and was diagnosed with this back in August 2008. Since then she has had chemotherapy Cisplatin and some other chemo plus radium.

 

Today she has been told it has moved to her liver as secondary, and my father collapsed with the news. I spoke to the consultant who tells me any further chemo therapy will only elongate her life by 2 or 3 months. The prognosis without chemo was also 2-3 months.

 

We are all devastated by the news, and we want to do what’s best for my brilliant mum, but don’t know what to do ? Shall she have more chemo ? Which I don’t think she could take !! or, face the inevitable and make her last months memorable.

 

My god this is awful typing this, and tears are streaming down my face, I just want to do what is best ! But I don’t know …. I am not an oncologist, and feel totally helpless.

 

Any suggestions would be welcome, plus what shall we expect if she does not take treatment, what will happen ? Can we pre-plan for pain management, how long will it be before something is noticeable ? Too many questions, not enough time …sorry …just desperate now..

 

Gary

 

Thanks Gary for sharing and feel free to drop by any time. Walking the road of cancer together is easier than walking it alone.