Search Results for '5fu'

Hello. I wanted to give you an update on my mother, and welcome any advice/comments! My mother was diagnosed with bile duct cancer in Feb of 2012. She started her treatment of chemo gemzar in the last week of march 2012 until the end of august 2012. She got her CT scan done in the last week Aug 2012. At her follow up with the Dr, he let us know that the gemzar looked to working at shrinking her tumor in the beginning 2 months, then it looks to not work at shrinking it towards the months to follow. He gave us 3 choices and recommended one of them.
The first is to combine gemzar with cisplan. He does not recommend this because my mother is not in her stronger state and he says it takes a lot out of the older patients, leaving them bedridden.

The second choice was to try 5FU, which he recommended. He did tell us that it is an older form, but they do show that it works it some patients to fight this cancer. Side affects were similar to gemzar, with added sore mouth and may cause diarrhea.

The third was to stop treatment all together. For my mother, this was not an option, so it wasn’t discussed further! She is a fighter, for sure!

Back in June 2012, she took a trip to Korea to meet with a well known doctor who performed laser surgery to patients with bile duct cancer. After doing tests and scans and also looking her chart, he was unable to do the procedure on her because of her tumor location. Her tumor is located by where all her blood vessels are and all the doctors have said that it’s in a bad spot…
After returning, she developed a bloated abdomen, and swollen feet. The Dr prescribed her a diuretic spiiralltic ( sorry for the wrong spelling) and it worked after 2 weeks. But after her meds were finished her salt levels went down, and they said that she will not be given that anymore.
After about two weeks ( which is now) she developed the same bloated abdomen and swollen feet. The dr prescribed lasix of 1/2 pill ( 10 mg). After about 3 days, we saw that she was looking worse, so I contacted the dr and he said to increase the dose to another 1/2 pill. Saturday will be one week of taking the prescription, but no signs of her getting relief. Anyone know how long it usually take for it to work?
Also, tomorrow she is supposed to start her first treatment of 5FU, but she is not sure she can even make it there… Any advice is much appreciated. Thanks.

Chris started on Oxilaplatin/5FU 2 weeks ago and he started 2nd dose today. Last week his bilirubin dropped from 8.4 on day 1 of cycle to 6.1 on day 8. This past week, we have noticed that he has become more jaundiced and found out today that it has gone up to 10.2, but he still received chemo today and will get another dose tomorrow. Doctor halved his dose of 5FU in response to this. He is now scheduled to have a CT scan next Tuesday.
If this scan shows that chemo is not working, plan is to do chemoembolization. Can anyone tell us what their experience with this procedure is? Are the results immediate? How much pain is there afterwards? Can more than 1 of these be done? What about further systemic chemo?
Any information would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Dianne

We met with the oncologist this week to see what the next game plan is going to be. I finished steriotactic radiation two weeks ago but it is too soon to tell if it worked. Prior to radiation I had three months of Cisplatin and 5FU. He said the chemo regimen didn’t appear to be doing anything to the tumors so he suggested that we stay off chemo until I have a CAT scan on October 5th. I am really nervous about doing nothing to fight this disease till then. He said my body has been though a lot and this would be a good healing time. He said in October if there is new tumor growth then I would probably enter a clinical trial that uses biological agents or try a different chemo combo. Isn’t it strange that as much as we don’t want chemo…we do want it!

Maybe you guys can help me understand a few things, our doctor is a very nice guy but challenging to keep around to answer questions and honestly, most of these questions occur to me later. I’ve read on this board that some doctors don’t do chemo when a patient’s bilirubin is elevated. Last week my husband started Oxiliplatin/5FU when he was obviously jaundiced and his bili was 8.4. Halfway through the treatment the nurse reported his labwork to us and told us that the doctor was cutting the dose of 5FU by half (he was still receiving the OX at the time). Thank God he wasn’t denied chemo that day, I think he would have gone mad! He was miserable. 1 week later, his bili is down to 6.1 and he feels much better. What would have been the point to withhold tx.? I know a lot of people think that stents are the answer in this situation, but we’ve been told by every doctor we’ve talked to that they are not an option for him due to the location of the blockages.
Second question is that we asked the doctor that if significant shrinkage occurs, could surgery be an option? He said no, that if that were possible, we would have gone there first. That’s not what I’ve been seeing here. Some people do seem to become candidates for surgery after other treatments. Do you think that this is just a difference in philosophy? I told Chris that I’ll bet that if we went to Pgh. (we’re near there a lot visiting family) we could find a surgeon willing to do surgery. He says he’s sure I’m right, as this is what surgeons do, but to what end?
Any thoughts??

Dear all,

I’ve written before, but not frequently so I will tell you a bit about our case:

My husband was diagnosed at 40 with CC, sent to Mayo Clinic for treatment
Accepted into the LT program and completed all of the standard pre-transplant regimens (brachy, 5FU, etc). At LT (41), there was a lot of cancer, deeper than they would’ve liked so to get a clean margin, they did a whipple. He recovered really well from both LT and whipple.

At the 8 month post LT appointment (age 42), it was shown that his CA19-9 level and the CT that the tumor had returned to the BT and in the liver, I think. The tumor is around the portal vein, etc. and was already starting to push on this and cause slight blockage of blood flow. He was doing less well at this point in time, but still functioning at about 50% or so.

Mayo said the next treatment would be chemo, if he wanted it, but that time was most likely limited (they did not want to put a time frame on his life, of course). “Less than a year” was mentioned, but so was 6 months… it wasn’t clear, plus we all know these are just stats.

They did not do a PET scan, only a chest CT- which showed no tumors. No other scans have been done to date.

We opted for chemo in our home city, 4 hours from Mayo for logistics, etc. He is on a Gem/Cis combo (standard) where he gets a treatment once a week for two weeks and then has a rest week (1 cycle) and then starts again for cycle 2. After his 2nd Cycle 1 treatment, his H/H was so low, he ended up in the hospital needing transfusions and his WBC was also danger low. Once CBCs started up, he was released.

Chemo was halted for an extra week of rest but then resumed. He just finished the 2nd treatment of round 2 last Friday.

His CBCs are all very low, as before, but his kidney, liver, bili are all doing very well. BP, pulse all that is fine. No temps this time. Aside from the neutropenia, you’d think he was a healthy guy…until you look at him…

We are waiting for the next doctor appointment to have the tumor marker results and maybe a scan (if results are positive)… in the mean time I am really questioning the benefit of the chemo right now (at this stage).

Since begining the chemo he has gone from overall health of 50% to about 10% (IMHO) in a rapid amount of time. He sleeps most of the time and when not sleeping, he has a blank and vacant stare that he says he cannot control- he is in an “unexplainable fog” in his words. He still eats well and BM are regular, but he does have constant diarreah (sp). He feels all that he loves to do has been taken from him. He has had problems with sight loss and given systane to help rehydrate. He drinks lots of water. TV, books, playing with our son, talking… have all stoppped…. he’s like a ghost walking around the house, and it’s so hot outside he cannot go out.

I am so worried about him and wonder what could be causing this other than the chemo (e.g. other tumors they haven’t found).

I am mad about the chemo treatment because it’s put him in a stupor and his quality of life is in the toilet.

I feel like we are just “waiting for the end” because it has to be better than this, and then I feel guilty.

Basically, everyone feels lousy- sad, depressed, hopeless, and I don’t know what to do to break the cycle.

For those of you that have gotten to this stage during treatments… any advice? Any pearls of wisdom? Actually, it helped me just to share this with others.

Thanks for reading.
Jenny