Search Results for '5fu'

Hi – My mother, age 64, is also stage 4 with mets to liver and lungs, but no blockage or stents. She has had tumor fevers for two months now, every night, they said not to worry unless it goes over 101.5 and doesn’t respond to Tylenol, or if the fevers start happening during the day (any change in her symptoms). Last week, though, she had to be hospitalized for infection and high fever and shortness of breath, and they thought originally that she had blockage, but it turns out her ducts aren’t blocked, but just the buildup of fluid in the abdomen is a breeding ground for bacteria to cause infection. Also, she has been on Gemzar and Xeloda (5FU), and this has really compromised her immune system. Another possibility that the doctors suggested is that the infection is actually caused by the chemo killing a tumor in her liver and now the tumor is kinda like dead meat and causing infection but it’ll be fine after aggressive antibiotic therapy. They’re giving her broad-spectrum antibiotics, except penicillin, which she’s allergic to, and they say if she could tolerate penicillin it would be easier to treat her.

It’s so confusing when even the “experts” don’t know anything, but I suspect my mother was having regular tumor fevers that then developed into infection and the doctors didn’t realize it at first, so it went too long. Definitely get blood work regularly and see if her white blood cells are elevated and she has an infection. This week at the hospital was hell, even though I’m glad we finally caught it. It’s also a hopeful note that chemo could be causing the fevers just because it’s actually working and killing off some of the tumors.

Hope this helps ! Has your mother had any problems tolerating the chemo? It seems well tolerated by most people, but my mother has had a lot of problems with it, mainly the terrible anemia that saps her strength and makes her short of breath. I’d be interested in hearing if anyone else has had negative effects, as we’re thinking of doing a moderated dose if anything from now on.

Maggie –

I am so sorry to hear of the news about your mom.

My good friend did oxaliplatin, and later added in the 5-FU. The oxaliplatin was actually the first chemo she was given, and she achieved mild shrinkage from it. (It shrunk her large tumor by 17%) It did decrease the pain substantially. It also has some different side effects – most notibly the increased sensitivity to cold. It’s also known for decreasing the feeling in your extremities (impacting finger dexterity), and I believe this side effect can be permanent. She didn’t do the 5FU for very long, so I cannot really comment on it. But there are many others on here who have included it in their chemo regime.

Whether or not to head down this road is a personal question. The reality is that it’s not a cure. These drugs may help by slowing the tumor growth, thereby cutting down on the tumor pain and possibly giving your mom more time. The effectiveness of the drugs seems to vary greatly across all patients. Your mom may tolerate the side effects very well, or they could make her quality of life decrease significantly. I wish I could give you a clear answer on this, but unfortunately there is no clarity with this cancer. All I can say is that towards the end, my dear friend was so weak that her last chemo treatment almost took her from us. After her two week stay in the hospital, she opted to stop the chemo and try and enjoy what little time she had left. It’s a balancing act.

Please know that we are all thinking of you and your mom.

Hi CPS
I have or should really say had bile duct cancer diagnosed in August of this year and operated on in October. My surgeon was Mr Diamond in the Mater hospital in Belfast all I can say is he is brilliant, he carried out a whipple on my and i have no problems i was home in less than 2 weeks. I was then sent to the new cancer centre in Belfast City hospital and I am due to start chemo in December they are giving me 5FU but there is very little info or trials done on bile duct cancer so this is their best guess.

Mels,

Mark’s was on the same regimen as your brother for several months with good results as well. However, his neuropathy was starting to not go away between treatments, then the chemo stopped working anyway, so we stopped the treatments, the neuropathy continued and got a little worse. Our oncologist told us that is would gradually dissipate with time and then it might/might not go away all together.

Mark told me on Saturday that his neuorpathy has completely gone away – he has been working with a naturopath as well.

I think this is your brother’s first shot at chemo? If it is then he still has many options to look at. You will probably want to go into the patient profiles and find out what other patients are using and then take those options in to his oncologist and find out what direction he wants to go. You still have good options available, in 5FU or Xeloda, both have significantly less side effect than oxaliplatin, he will probably find them much easier to tolerate – he can keep the avastin as well as the body does not build up a resistance to it.

Let us know what you decide.

Stacie

My Husband has been on Tarceva for two months. Has had no new side effects.
He had 40 treatments of xl119 /5FU study first and was pretty exhausted going
into Tarceva. He had a CT scan today but we will not get the results until 11/22.

He was diganosed 10/10/05 with Cholangiocarcinoma Bile duct that spread to liver and then spread to the Lung in July 06 so had to come off the Clinical Study He had
5 to 10% shrinkage in May on the xl119 5FU but then found out it had spread to the lung in July o6.

We had a choice of Tarceva or Cisplatin and Gemcitabine, hoping for less
side effects we went with the Tarceva.

Mark has been on both. He was on 5FU for a couple of months, but you are right, it was more difficult to be hooked up for two days. The difference is that Xeloda, which he takes now, is in pill form and is a little harder on the liver (the liver has to process it) and most patients don’t want to stress the liver any more than it already is, however, our oncologist was not concerned about this, he said this was minimal if any. Xeloda does appear to have different side effects than 5FU as well.

Mark has tolerated the Xeloda very well and has had very few down days as compared to his other regimens. If you need more details you can look at the published works on both 5FU and Xeloda on pubmed

Hope this helps.

Stacie

Alison and Mike

I am sorry to hear about your mum. Where are you? – I know of one trial in the UK using XL119, I heard that all the patients where taken of 5FU and given the XL119 because the patients in that arm were doing so much better.

My Dad was on gemcitabine and carboplatin which made him quite tired. Platinum drugs and gemcitabine seem to be the first line treatment for non resectable disease, you should be aware that there are different generations of platinum chemo drugs (ie some are newer and better on the toxicity front then the older ones) carboplatin is not as harsh as cisplatin (2nd generation) and oxylplatin is 3rd generation. Quite a few patients on this site have used oxy. Treatment options vary depending on where you are and whether you have an oncologist who is prepared to think outside the box and try newer breakthrough treatments. This site is very informative – try looking at the chemo worksheets under general info section and discuss all options with your mums oncologist.

Hope this helps, Jules

You’re situation sounds very similar to my father’s (he’s 70 though, much older than your father). He also was too ill with jaundice to receive chemo. For about two months after finding out what he had (phase 4 cc, see my intro “we have had no time”) we waited for the bilirubin levels to come down. Finally, he had another proceedure as it was felt only half his liver was draining, as the other half was cut off from the drainage tube by the tumor. Stents were inserted draining the two “lobes” of the liver into his intestine. Since then his bilirubin levels came down, but not enough for the chomo treatment the oncologist wanted to give him. Your units of measure are different than ours, but he was over 300 at the highest level and then came down to 100, we were told 20 to 30 is normal. We then switched to 5FU as a chemo drug, which can be given with slightly elevated levels (at around 50 to 60).

My father has had his third treatment today. He is so week as his ascites and swollen lower half of his body saps all his strength, but we just aren’t ready to give up just yet. As the oncologist was very frank to say, if the patient) really wishes to continue with the chemo treatment, the doctor will agree to continue. My father is presently in the hospital, receiving care, which at this point is only a draining of the ascites once in a while. But tomorrow we want to bring him home.

At this stage we really don’t know if the chemo is helping him or not. The oncologist warned me that the chemo was only going to maybe help stop the growth or spreading of the tumor, or maybe help the ascites. But my father feels that at this stage, any action against the cancer is better than nothing, especially since we were so anxious to start chemo. One good thing is that there aren’t any side-effects of the drugs themselves that we can’t deal with.

I don’t know if this is helpful, but I just want to give you my little bit of knowledge on the subject. The past two months have been a whirlwind, and I can completely feel for you and your father.

I have to agree that until you are going through this heartbreak it is hard for people to understand how awful it is.
I keep all of you on this site in my prayers as I have sat here many hours reading everything on this site, especially when I am not able to sleep. ( see ALAN in remembrance). I also agree about the healthy eating lifestyles. Here in england I have what is known as 3 allotments (big gardens) and have always, only done my own veg etc. Therefor this was such a shock to us . Alan first visited the doctors surgery on 16/12/05 with a pain slightly below his left shoulder in his back. He was told he had pulled a tendon. He was given pain killing tablets. During the xmas period he complained of some acid in his throat. I told him he probably had a gallstone. On the 6th Jan. 06 he revisited the docs as he had started to get pain badly around the upper right (front) gall bladder area. He was given Gaviscon. He continued to visit the doctors surgery with acid in his throat and pain that was so bad at nights he had to rock himself to ease it. He still managed to work during the day. I told him to visit our local hospital on the 12th Jan as an emergency patient at night. He was duly x-rayed and told he was constipated. He was angry as he had been to the toilet o.k. erlier that evening. In total he visited the doctors 6 times during January. This is someone who for the whole of his life had only ever had chicken pox and the mumps plus a few stitches on the odd occasion. I begged him to go and pay to see someone, his response was why should I pay to see the same people that I am visiting now. I told him to tell the doctor that his gall bladder had gone wrong and my husband who required another prescription also told her that alan was very very ill. The response was that she could not find anything seriously wrong with him.
Finally, I told him that I would call them if he did not go back to another hospital, and we, alan and I both visited the hospital as an emergency patient. That was on the 15th of February. Alan had managed to work up until the 6th of feb. After being really messed about and diagnosed with gall bladder problems and various other things we were told on the 1st of March 06 that it was almost certain that he had C.C. There were lots of tests done that I expect most of you know about and finally two attempts to put a metal stent in to drain the bile. All of this took until the 3rd week in march.Alan had been told he may have some chemotherapy for 6 weeks but if there was no change this would be stopped. It was discussed with alan that there would be a combination in the form of ECF. This was Epirubin, Cisplatin and 5FU. There would have been a Hickman line inserted and one drug seperately each week .i.e.3 weeks and one week free. It then became a bank holiday and alan wished to go to spain to see his beloved motorcycle racing with 3 of his friends. He was advised to go as it would not make any difference as the line would not be fitted that week. He was still going to the bank etc until the 14th April but losing weight so rapidly it was unbelievable. On our second visit to the oncology unit we were told that it would not be advisable for him to have the chemo. He was having difficulty eating or even keeping any food in his body. He was then offered palliative care. I felt so helpless as there really wasn’t anything that could help alan. He never once showed anger but only begged me not to let him lie at home for long. He did not wish to be messed about and at the end passed away so very peaceful in his sleep. I am now so pleased that both alan and I only knew for about 7 weeks that he was going to die. He did this with such great courage and dignity that we have now raised so far

Woody

You say that the XL119 Ph3 trial is being changed to open status. Please could you provide a link to the source of that information ? Reason I ask is that I live in the UK and there is an XL119 trial here too but I declined to participate because half the participants get 5FU rather than XL119 and of course being a blind trial they don’t know what they are getting (not sure how you managed to find out). If the US trial has changed to giving all participants XL119 that could imply that the results so far show significant benefits from XL119, as you say very good news.

Thanks

Geoff