On 4/19/2008
cecgrove wrote:
My husband was diagnosed with rectal cancer stage 4 in 02/07. After 3 surgeries (1 was a complete miss with big chunks of good lung tissues emoved but the small sub-cm tumor left in the lung), radiation and chemo, we thought that he would be cancer free. After recovering from his last lung surgery end Feb 08, he had a scan this week and found that there were 3 new lung tumor nodules that grew within the last 60 days during his surgery and recovery. We were devastated and we both felt that this is it. We had 4 kids under 13 years old. He's now going out doing things he want to do but didn't have a chance because of the responsibilities, probably thinking that he is going to die soon. I don't want to live in fear and am losing sleep every night thinking that he will be gone soon. Can you share with us your experience and bring us some hope.
Also I have to say the experience with using different famous institutions and doctors have not been very pleasant. They were unwillling to work with each other in the best interest of the patient.
God bless!
Cecilia
Hi Cecilia,
My name is Jeff and am 39 years old. I was diagnosed with a rectal tumor in nov 05. When they scanned me they also saw 50 small nodules in my lungs at the time but did not think it was cancer because there were so many. I had the tumor removed and did 3 months of follow up chemo then rescanned. The spots did not grow and they were too small to do a needle biopsy so the doc wanted to rescan after 2 months. This next scan showed some minor growth but still too small to needle biopsy. I chose to have a lung biopsy (surgery) instead of waiting for them spots to get large enough to needle biopsy and sure enough they found that there were cancerous. So now my stage 3 cancer just jumped to a stage 4 terminal disease. I wanted to hit it hard so we did 6 months of folfox treatment and rescanned. Half the tumors were gone and the others showed shrinkage. I have been doing chemo off and on with Avastin and have now just started Vectibix. My small town oncologist is very supportive and I know everyone at the clinic and they have been such a blessing. They even fight for me with the insurance company for new drug coverage. I have gone to other specialists to get second opinions but have stayed with my clinic and my doc is always willing to confer with other docs to try to give the best treatment. So far so good. My doc is very optimistic that we can continue to treat this disease and keep it under control just like diabetes. From a terminal disease to a chronic disease. I don't have any miraculous news for you, but if you and your husband are willing to fight hard and long, you can still look forward to many more years ahead. I have a good friend that I met at the center and he was given 6 months to live almost 5 years ago. We cheer each other on and compare treatment options. He has abdominal cancer which is simular to colon cancer.
Since I don't have the option of surgery, I have to stick with the chemo regiment. I am optimistic that there will be new options in the future to needle blast these nodules maybe. There are alot of new drugs on the market that were not out even 5 years ago that are getting positive results. Erbitux, Vectibix, Avastin...and more are in the pipeline. I hope this can help giving you and your husband some ideas and optimism. Hang in there.
God Bless,
Jeff