Are we doing the right thing?????

I’m so glad I could give you some hope. I’m cautiously optimistic. I mean no offense to anyone who frequents message boards, but I tend to avoid them. Unfortunately I think people who aren’t having great results tend to post more and for me, that’s demoralizing. I know they help a lot of people though and there’s no right way to cope. Find what works best for you.

I posted this in another thread which gives kind of an overview of what my course has been, but it isn’t entirely applicable to this discussion. I won’t sugar coat it for you. It has been hell and I feel more sick now than I ever did from the cancer. I was asymptomatic when I was diagnosed and it was just found incidentally. My intrahepatic tumors were confined to my liver. I’m still here though and I try to be grateful for every day I’m on this side of the grass (my sense of humor is dark. It’s a coping mechanism). I don’t mention it below, but my first course of chemo was gemcitabine, irrinotecan, and panitumumab (which only helps people who have a KRAS wild type tumor).

“I haven’t had HIPEC, but I have had two resections and an HAI pump insertion. My first resection was at age 32 and they took my whole left lobe and the second was at age 33 after a recurrence and took wedges out of my right lobe and did RFA. After both surgeries, I was back at work after three weeks. I pushed WAY too hard though and I don’t recommend that course of action. Since you’re young like me and if you’re otherwise generally healthy, then hopefully the recovery won’t be terrible. My pain was well managed. My worst surgery was the third when I had an HAI pump inserted. The recovery does seem to be getting harder for me, but I know I am chock full of adhesions and scar tissue at this point, so they have to get through that mess before even doing the surgeries. None of my surgeries were laproscopic. I have a big chevron scar, which some younger doctors surgeons I have seen is from an older technique. I trust my surgeon though.

I had six months of neoadjuvant chemo and three months of adjuvant with the first surgery. Then I had my first recurrence and we went right to surgery. I was taking Xeloda when I had my second and we went right to the pump insertion. I had three months of HAI chemo as a part of a clinical trial at MSKCC, which was stopped because it did massive damage to my bile ducts. Luckily the tumor was gone by that point and (knock on wood) I haven’t had to have treatment for the cancer since February 2015. I’ll be dealing with the collateral damage from the HAI chemo (which is significant and a very long story) for the rest of my life.”

Let me know if I can answer anymore questions.