Hi Jodi,
I am very sorry to hear about your husband, but remember, don't give up-things will get better. My mom was diagnosed on May 2006 with stage 3 colon cancer. She had a large tumor in her secum, and 3 out of 12 lymph nodes were involved. She had surgery -which went great and started chemo(Folfox)in early June. Because of severe deppression after 4 Folfox treatments, my mom had a PET Scan. That was when her onc said that the cancer had indeed metastasized. She had 6 new tumors. One in her left adrenal gland, and the other 5 in lymph nodes. One in her neck, one in her shoulder, and three down her back. When we got this bad news, it was August 15th. My mom's onc said with out further treatment, my mom would probably live another 6 months. My family was devastated. On Aug 28th we started a new chemo treatment for metastatic colon cancer. Xeloda/Avastin. She takes the Xeloda two times a day for 14 days. It's a 1000mg in the morning and 1000mg at night. And Every other Monday, she goes in for her Avastin which is administered through her port. At the end of October, 2 1/2 months after starting the Xeloda/Avastin, my mom had another PET scan. The results were amazing. 5 out of 6 tumors were gone. The only one left is in the one on her left adrenal gland. We are going to continue with the current treatment until the end of January to see if that tumor will respond. If it does not, they will consider doing surgery to remove it. Then my mom would be truly in remission or NED(no evidence of disease.)
I am so glad that you took your husband for a second opinion and that they said to start chemo right away. I think you are right when you say that we are in a race against time and this ugly beast. Is your husband on any other chemo with the Xeloda? Where has the cancer spread to? Does your husband have a port? We used many nausea meds, but found that reglan(sp)
and gralla worked the best. It is important to get the vomiting under control. Talk to his onc about this. Is he drinking plenty of water?
To get to the colon section of this board: go to the main message board and click on it. There should be a section that says CANCERS, click on colon cancer and it should take you to that section. There are alot of amazing people over there who have great advice, and amazing stories of survival.
Look forward to hearing back from you. I will keep you and your husband in my prayers.
ValerieC