Is there hope if someone has stage 4 B Esophageal Cancer

lindadanis said:

Hope I can help
Dear Kathryn, first let me say that I am also from Massachusetts. My late husband, Ed, was diagnosed with stage four e/c cancer back on October 7, 2009. He had met to his liver, stomach and pelvis right from the start. After doing chemo for seven months, he developed mets to his brain, in which, he decided to do whole brain radiation. The radiation did nothing to the cancer, in fact, it even grew bigger. I decided not to tell my husband that radiation was a total waste of time because after doing four weeks straight of whole brain radiation, he was a totally different man, he could not even walk up to his bedroom, he stayed on he second floor until he passed away. Th first three rounds of chemo did nothing, in fact, the cancer even grew then, the oncologist changed up his chemo and he did three more rounds, which in fact, it did do something, the cancer had stopped growing and we thought we were on the road to recovery, until the brain cancer appeared a week later.

It was a roller coaster to say the least, we were up/down all the time. My husband was extremely depressed from the day he was told he had cancer, the original oncologist told him he had less than six months to live, nine to twelve months if he did treatment but that treatment was always "pallative", not a cure. I use to be on this site daily as there were many many people who helped me everyday try to keep sain during this terrible ordeal.

I don't know what to tell you but I felt so bad as I was reading your post. You sound like "me" back two years ago. My husband lasted eleven months, he passed away nine months today, September 15th at South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Mass. We also saw doctors at Dana-Farber and they basically said the same thing to us.

I do not think that treatment helped my husband nor did it help our family. We have one daughter, age 22 back then, and the stress of this horrible disease coupled with going to chemo everyday, back and forth, watching him sick as a dog, crawling out of bed to get there, hiding in his room when he got back, was a huge amount of stress on him as well as myself and my daughter.

Looking back, he made all the decisions and I prayed that they were the right ones. I do not know how long he would of lasted without treatment but I think his quality of life would of been different, I don't know. This cancer is different from alot of cancers, the poor victims of this disease rarely find out that they even have e/c cancer until it is stage three or four because there are no really big symptoms.

Everyone is different, everyone has to make their own decisions. This is something that I have accepted over the past nine months, the cancer made my husband so mad, he barely had a moment in his last nine months, that he could not think of anything but cancer.

I hope I have helped you in someway. You can always p/m me is you prefer., I hope I can help you out.

Linda

Your situation mirrors ours. My husband was diagnosed in early April, the 4th.  My husband's first round of chemo put him in the hospital for a week.  He said he wouldn't try it again but ended up agreeing to a reduced of new meds.  He had his second dose yesterday. The first two days are usually good but then the mouth sores, etc start and he's in pain.   It did shrink the tumor though because he's able to swallow now whereas before that, when he was diagnosed, he couldn't handle his own saliva.   Even though he has a feeding tube in place, he's been able to skip the nighttime feedings for a couple weeks now. He's got mets to the liver, nodes and diaphragm.  Sorry to dump all that on you!  My intention was to let you know I get it and pray for your family.