cancer spreaded to the liver...

andreea
andreea Member Posts: 5
edited March 2014 in Colorectal Cancer #1
Please if anyone of u can tell me more about the colon cancer that has spreaded to the liver...and the liver is affected pretty bad... Tell something usefull, anything,how bad is it, what should be done, if there is something that can be done....
thank u

Comments

  • madu
    madu Member Posts: 53
    #2
    I had a met to the liver which was resectable - they just lopped off a lobe. That was the end of it for me but my onc. prepared me for other options if my cancer returned to the liver. They can put a port into the liver and direct chemo specifically to that area - I understand it can be a bit rough but don't know for sure. If the met was small he planned to do RFA - radiofrequency ablation - where they stick a probe into the met and "microwave" it to death. There is also a "cold" version of this called cryosurgery - where they "freeze" it to death. So there's 4 options - surgery, chemo, RFA and cryosurgery - that were offered to me and there may be many more that have come up since my treatment ended. It's never good when there are mets in distant locations but it really depends on location and size and amount. I've been cancer free for almost 7 years so it wasn't a death knell for me but certainly a huge source of worry and alarm at the time.

    Heidi
  • big_al
    big_al Member Posts: 15
    #3
    madu said:

    I had a met to the liver which was resectable - they just lopped off a lobe. That was the end of it for me but my onc. prepared me for other options if my cancer returned to the liver. They can put a port into the liver and direct chemo specifically to that area - I understand it can be a bit rough but don't know for sure. If the met was small he planned to do RFA - radiofrequency ablation - where they stick a probe into the met and "microwave" it to death. There is also a "cold" version of this called cryosurgery - where they "freeze" it to death. So there's 4 options - surgery, chemo, RFA and cryosurgery - that were offered to me and there may be many more that have come up since my treatment ended. It's never good when there are mets in distant locations but it really depends on location and size and amount. I've been cancer free for almost 7 years so it wasn't a death knell for me but certainly a huge source of worry and alarm at the time.

    Heidi

    Hmm. A liver resection (removal of a lobe) is no fun at all. In my case it was done in conjunction with the insertion of a port and infusee pump. Once the pump is in place (in the abdomen) it's refilled once every two weeks, two weeks of chemo, two weeks of heperin. As my onc said, the chemicals are metabolized in the liver, so don't go to the rest of the body. Hence there are no side affects. There are people here who have had these for two years and seem to be quite stable (no new mets, no growth). I wasn't quite so lucky, so I'm doing regular chemo with all the fun that's involved. I had a lobe removed last August, because I had two arteries going to the liver, and that doesn't work too well. I didn't feel recovered from the surgery until December when I kind of woke up feeling fine. If they insert a pump, the worst side effect is when you try to get on an airplane.

    good luck
    big_al

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