Hi,
I am sorry to hear your mother. Having to battle colon cancer is well challenging. This is not to say your mother will have a hard time as it differs for everyone. My brother 34yrs old diagnosed 1 year ago with stage IV colon cancer with metastisis to the liver. Again his situation is the worst case scenario. If it could go wrong it has. He has had absoloutly no lucky breaks on any of this. You just never know who cancer will hit and when. It was a real shock when my brother was diagnosed as he is young and was a complete health freak his whole life. Mr all american boy! And as you read this you might think my brother must have poor doctors and bad medical care but it just hasn't been the care. He was fortunate to have his resection done by the cheif surgeon previously of MD Anderson in TX and his oncologist is nationally known. Anyway shortly after my brothers resection surgery (it will be 1yr Aug 27th) he became really jaundice (yellow). His blilirubin was really high so they decided to put in a stent to help the bilirubin drain from the liver. The tumors outside the bile ducts caused narrowing so the bilirubin backed up in the liver.
Now as you know I am not a doctor so please I am only sharing our experience with you. What I do know is that usually this stent proceedure is successful. Unfortunately with my brother they tried 3 different occaisions which one of the times resulted in a case of pancreatitus (supposed to be so painful that nothing can compare to the pain). We were told that in rare cases pancreatitus can happen and it did. To no avail they were not able to insert the stent so they externalized a biliary drain on my brother which he still has today. They now are again considering trying to internalize a stent which will be great if they can do it. As far as the Avastin it did stop the progression of the cancer in my brother but he had severe side effects the ones that are very rare so now he is on Zeloda and we will be getting some new images tomorrow to see where we are with the treatment and how well it is working. My brother like all of us has good and bad days unfortunaely his bad days seem to outnumber the good lately. He has lost close to 90 pounds and he was not heavy at all to begin with and he had very little body fat. He looks so very thin and cannot keep much food down. He has the appetite but the food does not settle well or he gets backed up and has to stop eating untill he has a bowel movement. He takes numerous stool softeners and laxatives as he is unable to pass a solid stool. It sometimes seems to be too much with no break but he keeps a positive attitude mostly and if anyone can beat it my brother can and so can your mother.
Look at it this way everyone has an equal chance to beat it so why not your mother. Just keep reading and communicating. Knowledge is power. Always question the doctors and make sure you get second opinions. The advances in medicine are getting better and better pretty quickly these days. It was not too many years ago the outlook was pretty bleak for cancer patients. Thank God for how far we have come in treatment options because just a few short years ago there were not any options except for 5 FU which well had been the only choice around 30 or more years. Take care my thoughts are with you. She can do it! she can! she can!
God Bless
Becky