Hello -
I am a newbie to this so I hope you all are patient with me...I am a very frightened wife of a husband who has metastatic rectal cancer to the liver and now lung.
In 11/2005, 3 months after my mother passed away from breast cancer and ultimately pancreatic cancer, my husband was diagnosed with rectal cancer. He underwent 25 treatments of continuous 5FU with radiation therapy. That was a long haul. The tiredness, sluggishness, lack of eating, etc. but he got through that.
In 2/2006, he had removal of the rectum which was not an easy surgery in that the tumor had gone through the rectal wall and the surgeon had to basically hollow out his pelvis down to the bone. He had a permanent colostomy placed. He also lost 6 units of blood during the surgery. He was hospitalized for 16 days and we were told that it was in 16 lymph nodes. At the time, we were not told by our surgeon that the first possible place for rectal cancer to spread was the liver.
I brought him home to care for him and had visiting nurses coming in to do dressing changes as he had an open rectal wound.
In 4/2006, he was found to be dehydrated and was admitted and had a antibiotic resistant infection in the wound. The infectious disease doctors came up with basically a new drug for him to use and that seemed to clear the infection up. But while undergoing CT scanning on this hospital stay, he was found to have liver METs.
The oncologist that we were seeing suggested going to Memorial Sloan-Kettering for a second opinion. That we did. However, we were very disappointed in the way that the physician was handling his disease and we found another more caring oncologist to continue with his care.
The two physicians (oncologist and Sloan doctor) spoke and came up with a plan of action for the liver treatment. He has been through FOLFOX, FOLFURI with Avastin and Camptosar. There was improvement with the Avastin, however, he had pulmonary embolus in the right lung and they stopped the Avastin and he had a Greenfield Filter put in to prevent further clots from passing through. He was having good results with the oxaliplatin however the neuropathy was starting and the doctor felt that if continued it could cause long term problems.
In April, 2007, he underwent intraarterial hepatic pump placement. He had 3 months of 5-week cycles of FUDR, Heparin, 3-weeks of 5FU.
On 8/15/07, we just found out that there was slight improvment in the liver tumors but now he has tiny tumors in the right lower lobe of the lung.
We are seeing our oncologist on 8/28/07 and from what I understand they are going to do systemic chemotherapy alternating with the liver pump using heparin and FUDR.
I am really scared. If you looked at him, you wouldn't even think he was ill. He feels good. His stamina is up and he wants to return to work.
Is there anyone out there that can shed some light on this for me. I don't have much in the way of close family except for a brother and he is 2 hours away. We have neighbors and a few friends that come by from time-to-time but we feel like people just don't want to bother with us becaue of him.
Sorry to go on and on but it actually felt pretty good just getting it off my chest.
Thank you.
Kathy