Found out My Dad Has Esophageal Cancer

Colbs said:

PET SCAN THIS WEEK

My Dad and Mom met with a oncologist last week and he will get a PET scan this week.  Hoping and praying for good news.  The oncologist did say if local it was curable but if it was regional is wasn't and they would be prolonging his life.  That comment kind of bothered me because I have read about people who had stage 3 or 4 and are now cancer free. 

hello,

when you have the operation it is in the hope of a cure. 

my husband had the operation but then a recurrence. rather than prolonging his life they term it here as a chronic disease , which changes the way you look at things even if means the same thing, that it is not a "cure". he is still getting treatment but feels good.

so wish you of course all the best and hope the pet scan shows it is local.

danièle

JKGulliver said:

Why only 50%

I don't know if this will help you, but I can say what we came to understand.  We spend a lot of time looking at data and statistics.  Cancer survival data is collected in the following manner:  from the date of diagnosis, a probability is given for surviving five years.  The first year would include the treatment period.  As far as we can tell, averages are used, not conditional probabilities.  Moreover, after five years, cancer researchers reset the clock.  Even though a return of cancer 10 years later may be, in fact, related to the original cancer event, the data is managed as though it was completely new and different.

If EC metastisizes or reoccures, after an esophajectomy, say, in the lungs or the liver, the patient does not have lung cancer or liver cancer.  Rather, the person has cancer of the esophagus, in the lung or liver.  Cancer does not spread, so much as it colonizes.  It is known to send out proteins and enzymes in advance of colonization to "prepare" an area for the future.  These preparations occure at the sub-cellular level.  In other words, it cannot be detected.  So, even if there is no evidence of spread at the time of original diagnosis, the esophagael cancer may already have colonized other locations or prepared other locations, but at a level that cannot be detected by PET or CT.  Or, it may not have.  In each individual person, there is no way to know.  

Radiation is targeted at the EC site, but chemo is systemic.  That is, it affects the whole body.  The medical assumption is that if the chemo successfully kills off X% of the cells at the cancer site, it is also killing off X% at the colonies.  In truth, this is heroic assumption.  Our current level of science does not know how to detect early colonies and does not know how chemo affects these cells.  In fact, all you need for a new tumor to grow is one cancer cell that survives treatment.  Because cancer cells, unlike normal cells, divide forever, that one cell can establish itself  opportunistically, after surgery.  That is why, even after chemo, radiation and surgery, the survival rate is 50%, at Stage 2.  (By the way, I think this is a guess, not a statistic, on the part of your Doc.)

I will throw in one more thing.  Trillions of dollars have been thrown at cancer over the past 80 years.  However, philosophically, we approach cancer reactively.  There is no preventative treatment, no medical therapies for the prevention of metastisis.  Nothing pro-active, even though the probability of reoccurance for EC is very high.  As a profession, medicine today simply waits until the cancer comes back.  If it reoccures, there is not much that can be done.  This is a pittiful approach, very high cost and a stain on the profession.  But, it is what we have.

Like your father, my husband was Stage 2 N0 M0, meaning no involvement of the lymphnodes and no sign of metastisis.  However, by the time he was half way through chemo, we understood the score.  My husband passed the one year mark about a month ago.  Honestly, we are scared every day.

hello,

i really thought your explanation clear and easy to understand. 

where did you get the info that cancer colonizes rather than spreads . I always thought cancer spread through blood vessels and lymph nodes. did you read a particular book or scientific article. if so , would you be able to give references?

thanks a lot,

danièle

dfd24 said:

very good explanation of metastasis and survival statistics

hello,

i really thought your explanation clear and easy to understand. 

where did you get the info that cancer colonizes rather than spreads . I always thought cancer spread through blood vessels and lymph nodes. did you read a particular book or scientific article. if so , would you be able to give references?

 

thanks a lot,

danièle

Here are some suggestions from us, but we've come to learn that each of us has a individual research journey as well as a physical one. 

1.  The Biology Of Cancer, by Robert Weinberg, is a textbook.  It is very accessible, however.  We do not have backgrounds in molecular biology and we were able to plow through it, brute force. 

2.  We found two books to be very helpful.  The Emperor of Maladies, by Siddhartha Mukherjee and The Cancer Chronicles by George Johnson.  These are not advise books.  These books are science, non-fiction.  They are very accessible and we learned alot from them.

3.  There are two books that have nothing to do with EC, but are very enlightening to understand how the cancer industry operates:  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Sklott.  The other book is The Philadephia Chromosome by Jessice Wapner.  You come to realize, through these books, that cancer is a business.

4.  Getting started on statistics, I'd go to www.cancer.org.  Lots of charts and graphs there, many of survivability, as well. 

5.  www.lonza.com is a cancer research site.

6.  It is amazing how much there is on YouTube.  Just type in esophagael cancer.  We watched the whole robot assisted esophajectomy prior to my husband's surgery.  There are now videos uploaded every day on treatments, presentations, etc.

7.  The National Cancer Institute has a website:  www.cancer.gov/statistics.  This is a very deep but frustrating database.

8.  The top journals in the U.S. for cancer research are:

     a.  A Cancer Journal For Clinicians

     b.  Cancer Cell

     c.  Journal of Clinical Oncology

     d.  Cancer Research

We had no previous background in this field.  We came to understand whatever we could through brute force.

JKGulliver said:

Why only 50%

I don't know if this will help you, but I can say what we came to understand.  We spend a lot of time looking at data and statistics.  Cancer survival data is collected in the following manner:  from the date of diagnosis, a probability is given for surviving five years.  The first year would include the treatment period.  As far as we can tell, averages are used, not conditional probabilities.  Moreover, after five years, cancer researchers reset the clock.  Even though a return of cancer 10 years later may be, in fact, related to the original cancer event, the data is managed as though it was completely new and different.

If EC metastisizes or reoccures, after an esophajectomy, say, in the lungs or the liver, the patient does not have lung cancer or liver cancer.  Rather, the person has cancer of the esophagus, in the lung or liver.  Cancer does not spread, so much as it colonizes.  It is known to send out proteins and enzymes in advance of colonization to "prepare" an area for the future.  These preparations occure at the sub-cellular level.  In other words, it cannot be detected.  So, even if there is no evidence of spread at the time of original diagnosis, the esophagael cancer may already have colonized other locations or prepared other locations, but at a level that cannot be detected by PET or CT.  Or, it may not have.  In each individual person, there is no way to know.  

Radiation is targeted at the EC site, but chemo is systemic.  That is, it affects the whole body.  The medical assumption is that if the chemo successfully kills off X% of the cells at the cancer site, it is also killing off X% at the colonies.  In truth, this is heroic assumption.  Our current level of science does not know how to detect early colonies and does not know how chemo affects these cells.  In fact, all you need for a new tumor to grow is one cancer cell that survives treatment.  Because cancer cells, unlike normal cells, divide forever, that one cell can establish itself  opportunistically, after surgery.  That is why, even after chemo, radiation and surgery, the survival rate is 50%, at Stage 2.  (By the way, I think this is a guess, not a statistic, on the part of your Doc.)

I will throw in one more thing.  Trillions of dollars have been thrown at cancer over the past 80 years.  However, philosophically, we approach cancer reactively.  There is no preventative treatment, no medical therapies for the prevention of metastisis.  Nothing pro-active, even though the probability of reoccurance for EC is very high.  As a profession, medicine today simply waits until the cancer comes back.  If it reoccures, there is not much that can be done.  This is a pittiful approach, very high cost and a stain on the profession.  But, it is what we have.

Like your father, my husband was Stage 2 N0 M0, meaning no involvement of the lymphnodes and no sign of metastisis.  However, by the time he was half way through chemo, we understood the score.  My husband passed the one year mark about a month ago.  Honestly, we are scared every day.

JKGulliver said:

Why only 50%

I don't know if this will help you, but I can say what we came to understand.  We spend a lot of time looking at data and statistics.  Cancer survival data is collected in the following manner:  from the date of diagnosis, a probability is given for surviving five years.  The first year would include the treatment period.  As far as we can tell, averages are used, not conditional probabilities.  Moreover, after five years, cancer researchers reset the clock.  Even though a return of cancer 10 years later may be, in fact, related to the original cancer event, the data is managed as though it was completely new and different.

If EC metastisizes or reoccures, after an esophajectomy, say, in the lungs or the liver, the patient does not have lung cancer or liver cancer.  Rather, the person has cancer of the esophagus, in the lung or liver.  Cancer does not spread, so much as it colonizes.  It is known to send out proteins and enzymes in advance of colonization to "prepare" an area for the future.  These preparations occure at the sub-cellular level.  In other words, it cannot be detected.  So, even if there is no evidence of spread at the time of original diagnosis, the esophagael cancer may already have colonized other locations or prepared other locations, but at a level that cannot be detected by PET or CT.  Or, it may not have.  In each individual person, there is no way to know.  

Radiation is targeted at the EC site, but chemo is systemic.  That is, it affects the whole body.  The medical assumption is that if the chemo successfully kills off X% of the cells at the cancer site, it is also killing off X% at the colonies.  In truth, this is heroic assumption.  Our current level of science does not know how to detect early colonies and does not know how chemo affects these cells.  In fact, all you need for a new tumor to grow is one cancer cell that survives treatment.  Because cancer cells, unlike normal cells, divide forever, that one cell can establish itself  opportunistically, after surgery.  That is why, even after chemo, radiation and surgery, the survival rate is 50%, at Stage 2.  (By the way, I think this is a guess, not a statistic, on the part of your Doc.)

I will throw in one more thing.  Trillions of dollars have been thrown at cancer over the past 80 years.  However, philosophically, we approach cancer reactively.  There is no preventative treatment, no medical therapies for the prevention of metastisis.  Nothing pro-active, even though the probability of reoccurance for EC is very high.  As a profession, medicine today simply waits until the cancer comes back.  If it reoccures, there is not much that can be done.  This is a pittiful approach, very high cost and a stain on the profession.  But, it is what we have.

Like your father, my husband was Stage 2 N0 M0, meaning no involvement of the lymphnodes and no sign of metastisis.  However, by the time he was half way through chemo, we understood the score.  My husband passed the one year mark about a month ago.  Honestly, we are scared every day.

my husband has stage 3 esophagus cancer, it is in the lymp nodes and stomach and made it to his back. Doctor gave him 2 to 4 months. he started on Radiation 3 days ago. are the doctors close on how long you have to live?   

Bhillier said:

My Dad also has Esophageal Cancer

Sorry to hear about your father my father also has  this cancer had treatment only to find out that it had returned in the same spot and no treatment is offerer cat this stage, he has been told he only had one year to live, I am worried for him as I do not think he knows how bad this is going to be,he is feeling very tired now and wants to know what he can take to raise his energy levels? We live in Australia and would appreciate any advice from anyone from around the world ax to how to cope with this type of cancer 

I'm sorry that your Dad has this diagnosis. My Dad was dianosed with EC in June and we've been reeling from it ever since. I hope this doesn't sound hokey but the best tips I can give are these: Postivity is healing as is mediation to still one's mind. Doing normal things and focusing on the day rather than the week, month, year, etc. If he is able to drink thick fluids,I would suggest the following smoothie recipe (tonnes of good calories and great for energy). I am not dietician but this helps my dad get a great boost of energy and contains a number of known antioxidant, cancer fighting foods:

-1-2 ripe bananas

-big handful of frozen kale

-2-6 pitted dates

-1/2 cup of hemp hearts (or more depending on the consistentcy). Great for protein, fibre and iron

-2 tbsp of flax oil (avocado oil or hemp oil are also good)

-almond milk and coconut water to get it to the preferred consistency (usually 3 cups or so)

-we also added a high calorie/protein supplemet from GNC (as much as was safe and palatable)

-1/2 cup to 1 cup of frozen bluberries

I also think the book Crazy Sexy Diet is very helpful both in terms of adjusting your mindset and envisioning a positive life with cancer. I would never allow the doctors to decide how much time he has. I have a friend who according to doctors, should have been gone two years ago and she is happy and emotionally healthy and living life as if tomorrow is guaranteed. Our brains are so powerful and they do have the ability to help us heal and sustain us.

Happy to chat any time.

Kate