radioactive implants

Hello all:

 I posted a message about my mother wanting survivial stories about 6 months ago.  She suffers with ampullary cancer, mets to her liver, and recent scans show a recurrence.  She's gone through regimines of 5-FU, Xeloda, Gemzar, Oxiplatin, but nothing is working.  The tumors in her liver are growing quickly and the recurrence is less than a year after surgery (whipple performed in June 2008).

 She is scheduled to start clinical trials at USC next month, which will start with radioactive implants into her liver.  Does anyone know what we can expect?  Side effects, success rates, etc?

 I hope everyone is doing well!  Much love to all affected by this.

--Alli

Please keep us up-to-date on the progress of radiation implants to the liver.  Since it is the most common site for recurrence, information on the  effectiveness of radiation implants will be important to all of us. 

 Best wishes.  No one should have to go through this. 

Hello all:

Just a quick update:

The Doctor at USC actually recommended trying another chemo, this one typically given to breast/ovarian cancer patients, so my mother is finally losing her hair. 

The radioactive implant procedure is called embolization, and is typical for liver cancer or mets to the liver.  She is still a candidate, but they want to try to slow down the tumor growth before doing any invasive procedure.  I believe it's the process Patrick Swayze is undergoing.  There are two recommended types: one inserts radiation and the other inserts chemo directly into the tumors, and cutting off blood supply to the lvier to prevent the tumors from growing, giving the liver a chance to heal.  It increases survival by months to years.

 All my best,

Allison

Another update:

The 4th round of chemo didn't take, and she did 2 rounds of the radioactive bullets.  Sadly, it didn't work, the tumors did grow, but seemed to have slowed a little.  And there are no new liver mets, although she hasn't been on chemo for 4 months now.  Also no new mets anywhere else, but there is some lymph node involvment in the bowel and pancreatic areas.  They started a new chemo regimin today, ivinotican + 5FU (or erbitux), but she had an allergic reaction to the 5FU, so now it's just ivinotican.

Dr. Lenz at USC is amazing and will keep coming up with options as long as she wants to pursue them. 

We started her with physical therapy, too, since she is quickly becoming deconditioned.  A tip: have your nurse practitioner write a prescription for physical therapy, then medicare picks up the cost.

Hope this helps someone.