stage 4 colon cancer with aggressive metastasis to the liver

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danwang57
danwang57 Member Posts: 2 *
edited October 2022 in Colorectal Cancer #1

I am 47 years old with stage 4 colon cancer metastasis to the liver, with KRAS G12S mutation. Had successful colon resection on 8/22/2022. At that time there were only 2 lesions in the liver, both around 1cm. One month later (8/23/2022) when I'm ready to start FOLFOX chemotherapy, the new CT scan revealed the existing lesions have grown and there are 3 new lesions, the 2 largest ones being 2.8 and 2.9 cm respectively. I'm really alarmed by the aggressiveness of the metastasis. Hope and pray the chemo will control the spread, especially preventing new ones from popping up. 

At the same time, I'm interested to see if anyone experienced similar explosive growth and prospects of it. Thank you so much

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  • danwang57
    danwang57 Member Posts: 2 *
    #2
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    Sorry I had a typo in the original post, the correct date for the new CT Scan should be "One month later (9/23/2022)"

  • Tueffel
    Tueffel Member Posts: 327 Member
    #3
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    My Papa had a very similar kind of growth of his liver metastases. Only difference was that it occured in 2 weeks. One met then grew from 22mm to 44mm, around 1mm a day... This growth might appear in people with bad immune system (immunosuppressed). Unfortunately my dad hadsome bad additional mutations causing fast resistance to the chemo. If your cancer responds, everything will be fine. Start the chemo and see. If you want, maybe a check up with usg can work to see if there is growth still.

    I would denitely ask your doctor for further tests of your cancer. Not only KRAS but like Foundation or genome testing.

    Good luck

  • tanstaafl
    tanstaafl Member Posts: 1,313 Member
    edited October 2022 #4
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    Hypergrowth typically reflects several problems - inflammation, immune dysfunction, cancer genetics and lack of (effective) chemical/biological treatment, even some of the days off.

    If you're like most patients, they haven't done much in several of these areas for a month or so, or ever - what most will call standard care or standard medicine - and I'll abbreviate as, std.

    Because multigenerational colon cancer had already struck in my family, I happened to know some of the "first aid" items for colon cancer before my wife was diagnosed, for two decades, courtesy of the Life Extension Foundation (LEF). I promptly looked up a lot more, including speculative research items. And lucky us, she had the most common of the bad stuff/biology - so we were on target from literal day 1, getting better at the off label chemistry and immune treatments in the weeks before surgery.

    What was missing, and it took me several years to dig some of it out, were the common blood tests that could give us rapid diagnostic and biological information that the doctors were missing - didn't know, didn't care, it wasn't std. I only got to add one important lab test, for us, before first surgery, CA199.

    At the operating room door, the colorectal surgeon's first words were "I didn't get it all" - an R2 resection, in trouble. But lucky us, she had had this strange, humongous immune reaction to her cancer, killing much of it, turning to literal mush. So strange that the pathologist and surgeon were perplexed by what they had never seen before, but still not paying attention, and wrote the fully necrotic tissues off, creating several diagnostic mistakes. Thrilled, we continued to add more chemistry and work on the chemo problem.

    Some of the blood tests are simple - like 25 hydroxy vitamin D, where (mega)vitamin D3 is a common gross deficiency in CRC patients, important specific blood level information and predictive of problems, especially when not fully corrected, as is still usual.

    Some of the extra blood tests, common labs, that have been important included inflammation tests like ESR, hsCRP, fibrinogen, ferritin and d-dimer, also useful in Covid.

    The missing liver and related tests that sometimes were life and death items for us, were LDH, GGTP, PT/INR, Bilirubin, total protien A/G, AFP (a "liver cancer" marker).

    We have typically ordered these over the phone (e.g. Quest Diagnostics, LabCorp, Life Extension 800#s), often not fooling with local drs ignorance and erratic insurance coverage beyond std - life can be too short, or shortened.

    In your shoes, what would I do now?

    1. do a Chem20 or CMP; and CBC, CEA, CA199, AFP, with the other extra blood tests today, before any chemo distortion if you have any inclination to use broader medical answers and discussions
    2. if you have the time, money and insurance, call Memorial Sloan Kettering to inquire about hepatic arterial infusion (HAI) and book a flight
    3. talk to LEF and cancer oriented naturopaths about their strongest supplement routines
    4. start working on 1st chemo right now


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