Some people have been criticizing me that “I think I am an expert on liver cancer, yet they never heard me talking about the well known stage 4 liver cancer…”
First and foremost: I am not an expert. My father had metastatic liver cancer, so he is the one who experienced it all. I only could sit by and watch how a seemingly healthy man 4 months later dies sleeping next to me…
Secondly, father had metastatic liver cancer with unknown primary. Stage 4 liver cancer is a primary liver cancer metastizing out of the liver.
Stage four liver cancer
This is the last or so called end stage seen from where the cancer originated. When the cancer spreads from the second lobe of the liver, via an important blood vessel, to other organs or to the sheet of tissue that lines your abdomen, you are in stage 4. In other words: the cancer became a traveler inside your body, so there is no more stopping him now.
Definition of a metastatic liver cancer
Now we are talking about where a cancer that has spread is “settling down”. Here a cancer has been traveling around your body and "put up base camp" in your liver. Whatever you do to eradicate base camp, there is still some cancer out there ready to travel again.
With father it was an unknown primary cancer: most cases the cancer is known and most likely started being a cancer in the colon.
Palliative care
I have to repeat that this site started with father having metastatic liver cancer but evolved into a palliative care blog, since father didn’t have the energy nor the lust to continue writing. He knew the end was near and that his children would take over the torch. For calling people an expert: father was the expert on metastatic liver cancer, but you don’t want to be an expert in somebody that kills you in quite an ugly way.
Briefly in our life we became expert palliative care takers, but we have to be humble when looking at our nephews who took care of their father for more than 20 years…
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