"Recurrence" in lymph node

Linda,
Can't help with the recurrance issue, but please do not give up hope. My hubby was dx'd stage 4 in Feb. He had the prim. tumor removed in March and is now awaiting surgery to resection his liver to remove the one met he has. His father also has cc. He was considered cured but it came back over 2.5 yrs ago - 8yrs after orig. dx. He had mets to lung, liver and pancreas. The met in his lung and pancreas are gone/dead ( they were not removed) and they are now working on changing his chemo for the liver met... He has done remarkably well for having all those places involved. He hardly gets any side effects, besides diarhea. He keeps us amazed... you and people like him give us great hope that even when obstacles arrive, they can be overcome. You are our inspiration, so don't give up hope! We will keep you in our thoughts and prayers... Hang in there!
God bless and Keep you.
Sally jo

Linda- I am so sorry to hear about your recurrance. That has got to be tough. I am certain that this has got to be a very big let down. I am glad to hear that you have friends to help keep your spirits up.

I had metastasis to my left supraclavicular node, after having surgery for peritoneal metastasis, and radiation therapy for treatment of recurrance in some abdominal lymph nodes near my aorta. It was really weird. My arm was sore one morning and by that afternoon I had swelling over my entire clavicle and a fever. A couple days later, the diffuse swelling went down and I could feel a pretty large lymph node protruding above my clavicle.

My radiation oncologist mentioned to me something about these lymph nodes getting affected occasionally with some other lower abdominal tumor. I think that there must be some connection of these nodes with the abdominal lymphatic vessels.

Regardless, hang in there. I hope that you respond well to treatment, and feel better soon.

Let us know how things go.

Best wishes,

Kris

lindamarie53 said:

Kris,

There is a connection between these nodes and the abdominal area. I had a tumor in my duodenum when I was originally diagnosed (one of the tests I underwent was an upper endoscopy). After 7 months of chemo, it appeared to be gone, and nothing showed on the PET scan, but when I was undergoing surgery, they found another tumor in that area. I've heard that mets to the supraclavicular node is rare in CC, but I wonder if it's rare or just rarely detected because some mets don't show up in scans, and most scans for CC don't include the neck area. I didn't notice the lump on my neck until my doctor told me. It felt like a marble at first and became almost golf ball size within a few weeks (by the time we got biopsy results and I started back on CPT-11).

My doctors have not talked to me about the possibility of radiation yet. I'm feeling terrible on CPT-11. How did you tolerate radiation therapy? I've never had any.

Linda

Since the supraclavicular nodes are palpable when they get big, and oncologists usually palpate regions where there are accessable lymph nodes, I suspect that they don't get ignored for long if they are getting big.

The one advantage of having it large was that I could palpate it too and could tell that oxaliplatin was working as I could feel it getting smaller.

I am sorry that you are feeling so badly on CPT-11. I can sympathize. I had 4 treatments with it when I was first diagnosed and had a pretty rough time with it also. But everyone is different. Some people seem to do just fine with it. I would let your oncologist know about how badly you feel. Perhaps there is some medication that would help aleviate some of the side effects.

They probably have not talked about radiation therapy because the lymph node itself does not seem to be causing you problems, and because, if you have a lymph node enlarged at some distance from the site of your previous tumors, they worry about other tumor tissue that they cannot see and want to treat your whole body.

Radiation therapy treats only a local area. It is used in some areas prior to surgery to make a tumor easier to remove by making the tumor smaller and killing off tumor cells that may be creeping into adjacent tissue at the edge of the tumor, or after surgery if they feel that tumor tissue microscopically extended so close to the surgical margins that they are worried some tumor cells could have been left behind. Most commonly this is done for rectal tumors where there is not as much normal surrounding intestine to be damaged by the radiation.

They also use radiation therapy to control tumor if it is in danger of damaging nearby important tissue such as the spinal cord before chemotherapy is likely to have an effect, or to control pain.

I had radiation therapy when I got very bad back pain due to lymph nodes stretching nerves from my spine. I tolerated it pretty well, although because of the location, they had to hit a bit of my stomach also, which made me nauseous.

I hope you feel better soon,

Kris