Bile Duct Cancer, any good news out there?

Hi Victor:
Sorry to hear about your mother, I had my surgery done in Halifax, Nova Scotia at the Royal Victoria Hospital, the surgery was done by a doctor whose name is Dr. Jeffery Porter, I think I was very lucky to have him as my doctor, he seemed to know what he was doing. He told me radiation and chemotherapy would not work. I am keeping my fingers crossed, today I don't feel to bad except for being tired very easily. Let me know how you make out.

Jackeline,

Thanks for the information. Right now my mother is feeling better because has a percutaneous stent running up to the bowel, that eliminated the itching. Doctors are planning chemo and radio, but we are still looking for surgery options, if possible.

Regards,

Victor

Hi Victor,

I'm sorry to hear about your Mother. My father was diagnosed Mar 17, 05. He had surgery Mar 22, 05
at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St.Louis, Mo. His surgeon is a top biliary surgeon in the USA. His
name is Dr.David Linehan. Good luck to you both.
Kathi

Hello everybody,

I am looking for information about Xeloda and taking folic acid. It says on www.xeloda.com that you should tell your doctor if you are taking folic acid. In my country Denmark this is all kinds of multivitamin tablets.

My father (64) has Cholangiocarcinoma with mets to the liver. Has to stents one in each lobe. Is currently receiving Xeloda for a week, one week of and then over again. Simultaneously receving Oxaliplatin and Gemzar injections every fortnigth.

He is right now fighting a pneumonia, as I have found out is at normal side effect of Gemzar. Did you know?

Other side effects of Xeloda is cardiac arrest, that scares me a lot.

Looking forward to hearing from anyone.

Greetings from Randi

Hi Viktor,

My wife had a Klatskins Tumor which was successfully resected last May (2004). At the time it had invaded the portal vein and her prognosis was grim. We were told by local doctors that it could not be resected. We ended up at the University of Wisconsin where surgery was performed and the tumor was completely removed. It took 60% of her liver. She has up to this point been relatively well but a cat scan shows suspicious areas on her liver so it may have recurred. We are to get a biopsy done next week.

The last year has been great by comparison to death and she has lived an 85% normal life.
Chemotherapy appears to be in our future however.

I would strongly recommend that you get in touch with Dr. Kalioglus office (I may have misspelled his name . He is Turkish)Phonetically it is pronounced Kuh lie uh loo at the University of Wisconsin. He is very very good.

Also I am looking at some promising nutritional, low impact approaches. There is a drug called Artemsinin which was used to treat malaria successfully. Since it appears to use iron to destroy the organism and since cancer cells use an inordinate amount of iron it has been used to treat cancer cells some say successfully (it is hard to believe everything you read plus being desparate does not help matters). The website is http://www.ctrf.org/cim/pdfs/singh/pdf

The drug if I remember right has been approved by the World Health Organization for Malaria treatment. There is some really encouraging anecdotal information at http://www.springboard4health.com/notebook/nutrients_artemis

Please let me know how you all are doing. It appears we are in the fight together.My e-mail address is joespillman@hotmail.com if you want to communicate.

God Bless You

Joe

Hi Randi,

My wife has the same cancer and took Xeloda for an extended period of time with minimal side effects. Because of the scrutiny he is no doubt receiveing from his Doctor, you cant worry too much about the cardiac end of the problem. She underwent a removal of the tumor a year ago but the cancer appears to have resurfaced. She will
be taking Gemzar also. Please let me know how things are going. We are battling the same disease.

God bless you

Joe

Hi Barlow

My wife underwent a resection of a bile duct tumor a year ago and has been relatively healthy for a year. The surgery she underwent was radical but it has bought her a year even though it appears to have resurfaced.

She had 60% of her liver removed at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She too had spots on the liver but they cut out most of her liver and just keep doing biopsies as the surgery progressed. The Doctors name is Dr Kalioglu. I dont know if the name is spelled right. Phonetically it is Kuh lie uh loo.

God Bless You

Joe

Hi,
I hope that I have the right message reply.
"Jackeline" I hope that you're doing well after your surgery.
My father was diagnosed about a year ago and went through the 5fu treatment and cisplatin. He was not recomened for surgery. I don't know if that's because we live in British Columbia and don't have the expert surgeons or that there's no chance of resection.
Can you find out if Dr. Porter can take on another
patient from Canada. We live in Prince George BC.
we have all Ct scans on CD and have all Drs reports.
My father has some kind of fluid starting to build up in his stomach and has to be drained about once a week.
He's getting weaker by the day.
It would be a scary thoought that we didn't try all
avenues open to us.
We would rather get this done in Canada than the USA.
Any reply would be appreciated. Thank you.

Hello Joe.

I hope your wife is doing fine and that the cancer is decreasing.

My father has now had 8 times of chemo. Every 14 days he receives to drugs Oxaliplatin and Gemzar. In the week after that he takes Xeloda pills and then it starts over again.

After the first 4 times the ct scan show regression he is now awaiting a new ct scan and we will be told mid august if there still is regression.

His side effect is flu-like feeling, nausea, obstipation and dizzyness.

He is also more tired than normal. But can almost do everything like before.

Not much news I just wanted to reply to your message.

Randi (Denmark)

Hi Randi

I am happy your dad is doing so well. Xeloda is a very powerful drug but well tolerated by many.

We have since found out that my wife's tumor was not Klatskins but a recurrent breast cancer that happened to show up where Klatskins tumors show up . A followup test showed it was estrogen sensitive so now Rebecca can take a drug that blocks estrogen. They have given her two years but alot of talk like this is nonsense since they couldnt properly identify the cancer in the first place.


Life takes strange turns.

Stay hopeful.

Joe