Am I in the right place?

Well Patty,

I am not sure now. Thinking back it is all a blur as to what the doctors said. When first diagnosed we were told it was secondary liver cancer. They spent 3 months doing MRI, CT scans etc to locate this primary source. None was found. As far as other health problems, he battles arthritis, he has mangled left leg that has never healed since he broke literally every bone in it (this of course being the reason we found out about the caner, because of his knee replacement surgery, which he vows he should have never done because it gives him more pain than the cancer), also he had a bowel resection and is left with a colostomy which gives him constant grief. He has talked to the doctors about reversing the colostomy, but they don’t believe he is strong enough. When they said “special” case I think they were referring to the fact that no other options will work. They said radiation could shrink it, but since there is the metastasis it wouldn’t be worth it in the long run. The stage 2 thing concerns me, although this doctor was not the one who opened him up and saw the progression of it. He did say it was difficult to say, and that in my dads case they couldnt really go by stages? Umm, he then went on to say “you’re going to be around for a long time!” This felt like false hope to me, but perhaps the doctor didn’t want to scare my dad. Although I know just have this fight back and I would regret not looking into this further and having someone else look at his records! I will be honest though, it does scare me. And what if my dad doesn’t want it? That is what I am scared of. Dad is FINALLY accepting this…But it would be better to know for sure.

Hello All!

Wow I was surprised to find a couple replies already. Thank you! Just to give you some more information, I am from the great North of y’all!! In cold Canada. So you may not know the doctors here, the specialists. My dad lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada and is working with Dr. Biagi at the Cancer Centre there. And I from Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. Similar to Pam, my dad was in the hospital for a completely separate knee replacement surgery. They then noticed his white blood cell count was through the roof. They did some scans and saw a perforation in his bowel. To avoid the abscess popping they did an immediate surgery to remove the abscess that would leave him with a colostomy. They then found what looked to be a secondary liver cancer while poking away in there. But they did tests on the part of the large intestine and no cancer cells were found. Rather it was diverticulitis. Now, this was in august 2008. Then the resection was supposed to occur October 30th 2008, when they said it was inoperable. That is when they gave us 2-12 months survival expectancy. Then while in another appointment my father asked what stage? The Doctor said “it’s difficult to say. But stage 2” I thought the reason they couldn’t operate was because it was too advanced? The original team of doctors that gave us the 2-12 suggested we opt for “quality of life at this point and not do chemo or radiation because it really wouldn’t make a difference” since my dad is a “special” case. My dad, and our family are okay with this. We believe God has a plan here and He will take my dad when He chooses. All my dad wants is to start to go for regular CT scans to see how large the tumor is getting and all that. Since August the tumor has grown from 5x6cm to 10×11 and of course we know it has metastasized to the other lobe in 2-3cm pieces.I did look into some side effects, and symptoms of this. They recently put my dad on this steroid Dexamethasone, but we later found it was killing his leg that is already mangled. Also, it was making him really jittery and anxious!! Considering before the steroid he was very tired and would rest, he has now painted his entire home in a matter of a couple weeks. He won’t sit down! It’s really kind of cute and I think he has this need to keep his mind occupied and make his home pretty to live in, since this is where he wants to lay his head down.

Thank you for all the advice and support already! Blessings,
Ashlea