Stage 4 - mets to distant lymph nodes only - 8 month Death Sentence?!

have2believe said:

May I ask where specifically
May I ask where specifically in the lymph node did it spread?

In November 2009, my mom was diagnosed w/ stage 4 stomach ca. She was symptomless, just a slight tightening of the waist. She told the GP who thought it was something to do with the lungs not realizing that the discomfort was from the stomach and the xray of the lungs came clean. Then she had a lymph node by her neck that swelled up...biopsed...endoscopy...you know the story. Completely new to this, we didn't even know the stage until we met with the surgeon. He said that once it's in the lymph nodes, surgery is usually not an option. While he was a very caring man, he was honest and said w/o chemo, maybe 3 months, with chemo up to 5 years...

Even to this day, she does not have many symptoms, only slight side effects from the chemo. Sometimes if her head hurts, she don't know if it's just the headache or if it's the c. After several cycles, the tumor by the neck disappeared, but it was still in the stomach. However, the dr. recommended to get do the wait and watch approach and from May to the end of November, she was off chemo and did scans every 3 months. In Dec, there was reoccurred in the abdomen, so she is now doing a second line of treatment. We will not know if it's working until a few weeks when she gets scanned for the first time. I hope w/ all my heart that the drugs are effective.

Well, it's now Feb 2011 and my mom's a trooper. Everyone reacts differently from chemo and they have great meds to take care of the usual symptoms. I think it's definitely worth a try. I know someone who was on 2 types of chemo consecutively and it spread to the lungs and nodes and now she is cancer free. She went to sloan to consult and they said that they would have to wait atleast 1 full year before considering surgery, but at the same time, maybe surgery won't be necessary since they got rid of it all.

Please get a second opinion if you can because if anything, you can get a different perspective. We've gone to sloan, u penn, cinj, and two drs w/ their own practice. And I won't hesitate to see another one, or look at clinical trials.

I think that since this cancer is not that common in the US, there aren't that many success stories, but they do exist, and I cling onto that hope that she will be able to live a very long life.

Eric, have you heard of Dr. Block in Chicago? He's known for integrative oncology and I'm thinking about taking my mom for a nutrition consult. I was wondering if you happen to go to him.

My best wishes to everyone on this board.

Thank you for your support, it means a great deal
Thank you for your support guys, it does mean alot to me.

My partner is taking the ostrich approach to danger. Putting his head in the sand and hoping it goes away. Actually I'm being harsh. He's terrified and in pain, he doesn't want to think about it and even though I'm heavily invested, I'm not the one going through it. I can't truly understand what it's like to have my own body turn against me and know I'm fighting the odds.

He doesn't want to read about it. He doesn't want to know what's happening. I've been trying to get him here since we first found out and over to cancer campus. So he can see others who have beat the odds or at least read about the options that are being developed. He simply wants to put trust in his doctors and let them deal with it. I can understand what he's doing, as it must be so much to take in, however he needs to be in control of his own treatment. To understand what's happening at every step and make informed choices. I've tried debate, I've tried coaxing, I've tried shouting, I've even tried showing him pictures of his grand kids just to make him realize what he is fighting for. At the moment he just closes down each time, calls me a pest and walks away. I'm hoping that if I'm just there for him, eventually he will open up again. I'm not giving up. I spend about 6 hours a day researching stomach cancer and the studies that they are doing. I've been on the phone to hospitals around the world, inquiring about their trials and I'm going to continue with this, with the hopes that when he eventually wants to listen, I will have all the info their.

His refusal to do EVERYTHING he can do, is just causing me to get angry at him, when really I'm angry at the cancer.

Sorry about the venting their, I'm normally very forthright with people and recently I've just bottled everything up inside, as I don't want to push him to the point where he pulls away.

As for our situation. Apparently no other organ is affected. He has 3 distant lymph nodes affected, one near the left collar bone at the nape of the neck(which is very badly affected), one near the right collar bone and I'm unsure where the third is, I think it's near his shoulder blade.

The stomach tumor is taking up about half of his stomach but he still has no problem eating and his appetite is the same and that's saying something. As I'm a BIG eater (I think it comes from being Irish) and when I cook food, it's a proper plate of food you get and he still eats all of it without issue.

His primary symptom was slight trouble swallowing. This went on for 6 months with me pestering him to go see about it and eventually a bit of potato got stuck and panicked the life out of him. so he went and we found the cancer via endoscopy. Their was no pain initially, however shortly after diagnosis, more symptoms onset quite quickly. I've asked the docs and they say that's normal, something to do with the brain no longer being able to ignore the symptoms anymore and the focus upon them making the physical symptoms worse. (kinda like the reverse of a placebo) He has agonizing pain in his back, caused by deferred pain from the lymph node involvement, which is resulting in him not sleeping well and having to be on Morphine.

We live in Scotland (in the UK), so we don't have the same wealth of hospitals to choose form as you do in America. We also have slightly different drug regimes over here. Saying that however we still have some world standard hospitals, which are all part of the NHS. the Royal Marsden (London) and Christies (Manchester), spring to mind. However they are quite a distance from Bonny Scotland ad my partner doesn't want to be separated from his adult children (which is understandable). In Scotland we have more limited resources but we still have a couple of people who are amazing, the primary person being Jeff Evans, who is a clinical oncologist and specialist in stomach cancer who has an extremely good reputation. IT is this man that I want my partner to go see, but he simply refuses. (which is very very annoying!)

Well truth be told I want him to go to the Royal Marsden, but a 500 mile trip for treatment is a very long journey for someone in pain, so I can understand his refusal.

I just want him to be doing everything he can, as 8 months is simply not enough time!!!