Is there hope?

sasha82

Hi,
My mom 55 was diagnosed with lung cancer 3 years ago.
She had a surgery where her tumor was removed from the lungs.
During the surgery some of the lymph nodes around were removed and later showed signs of cancer cells in a biopsy.
She did chemo treatments.

Since then she was under observation.
A few days ago they found a 2 cm met in her liver.

Is there any hope???

soccerfreaks

Hope and Humor!
There is always, hope, and it is helpful if one can manage to maintain a sense of humor throughout the ordeal (why go through all of this in a miserable state?).

There is, to be honest, more hope for some than for others. Neither I nor anyone else can fairly assess the measure of your mom's hope, not even the doctors who probably have the best chance of making solid predictions.

For your information, and in my experience, finding more cancer in the lymph nodes is not the best news. It is my imperfect understanding that the lymphatic system is a superhighway for cancer.

Further, if the 2cm node found in the liver is metastasis, as you indicate, that is indeed not good news.

It has been my personal experience that when doctors discover that cancer has metastasized, they are reluctant to do things like perform surgery again, probably because they believe it is merely a stopgap measuse, evidenced by the spread of the disease from one organ to another: there is no telling where it will show up next.

This tends to drop the peg on the Hope meter, for sure.

They are likely to offer palliative chemotherapy, and perhaps radiation, to increase mom's life span while allowing her to spend this life in a higher state of quality. There is no telling how long this extra time may be: many happen to manage their cancer for years through personal effort and the creative works of their medical teams; it may be (hopefully) that the treatment shrinks the liver tumor and renews optimism for other alternatives. It happens, and I read about it a lot in here.

So, while mom is not in the best of shape at the moment, there is still hope, there is always hope for those who insist on hoping and caring and fighting and laughing and finding new goals.

I am not a doctor but a survivor, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Hope and Humor!

Best wishes to mom and her family.

Take care,

Joe

lekkerone

soccerfreaks said:

Hope and Humor!
There is always, hope, and it is helpful if one can manage to maintain a sense of humor throughout the ordeal (why go through all of this in a miserable state?).

There is, to be honest, more hope for some than for others. Neither I nor anyone else can fairly assess the measure of your mom's hope, not even the doctors who probably have the best chance of making solid predictions.

For your information, and in my experience, finding more cancer in the lymph nodes is not the best news. It is my imperfect understanding that the lymphatic system is a superhighway for cancer.

Further, if the 2cm node found in the liver is metastasis, as you indicate, that is indeed not good news.

It has been my personal experience that when doctors discover that cancer has metastasized, they are reluctant to do things like perform surgery again, probably because they believe it is merely a stopgap measuse, evidenced by the spread of the disease from one organ to another: there is no telling where it will show up next.

This tends to drop the peg on the Hope meter, for sure.

They are likely to offer palliative chemotherapy, and perhaps radiation, to increase mom's life span while allowing her to spend this life in a higher state of quality. There is no telling how long this extra time may be: many happen to manage their cancer for years through personal effort and the creative works of their medical teams; it may be (hopefully) that the treatment shrinks the liver tumor and renews optimism for other alternatives. It happens, and I read about it a lot in here.

So, while mom is not in the best of shape at the moment, there is still hope, there is always hope for those who insist on hoping and caring and fighting and laughing and finding new goals.

I am not a doctor but a survivor, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Hope and Humor!

Best wishes to mom and her family.

Take care,

Joe

Honest
A very honest assessment Joe. As per usual, your posts are very well thought out and never without some hope. Diane

z

Sasha
Yes there is hope, and there are treatments to shrink the liver tumor and also remove it. Your mom needs and aggressive dr. to help decide what is the best treatment for your mom. Fortunately, the liver is one our organs that can grow back. On the colorectol board many survivors have gone through liver resection, and rfa to rid the liver of the metasis from the colon cancer. I hope your mom will go to a major cancer center for treatment. I wish you well Lori.

charlied72

There is always hope.

There is always hope.