chemoembolization vs radioembolization

I had theraspheres in February two short weeks after a liver resection that took my left lobe but was only palliative as there were also small tumors on the right that were left in. The two weeks following the spheres were like the flu with fevers and tired and then all better. The surgery was the hard thing to recover from. But then in parts of April and May I had a series of recurring fevers and an overwhelming lethargy – – every time I stood up I felt I would shatter into pieces and end up in a pile of shards on the floor — it was wierd. By the end of May that was all gone and my markers were all much lower (but never back to normal) My interventional radiaologist says the tumor necrosis factor caused the fevers and that the tumors were dying off. Sure enough by scans mid-July I had no visible evidence of any disease, no tumors, nothing. I have had an absolutely wonderful summer and have felt, other than tiredness, much better than I did when I was diagnosed in October 2012. I have not been on any chemo or anything since January because my platelets are shot. The bad news is that my markers doubled between July and August so I need to move on. I am getting new scans this week. So I believe that the combination of surgery to de-bulk the tumor load, followed immediately by the y-90, bought me six months of good times with my family, even with the fevers. So I am a fan. You can only do y-90 twice. I would not hesitate to have another go down the road with it. I hope this helps. email me if you have any other questions about my experience with y-90 radioembolization, and good luck!
Holly

Hi Dorien,

My Lauren had radioembolization in the form of Theraspheres. She had it on the side of her liver that had several small tumors. The actual procedure was not painful. She did develop a pain in her chest that lasted for weeks and the doctors attributed it to nerve pain. The spots showed up on future CT scans and the docs were not sure if it worked. Turns out when she had her first surgery, her surgeon said all the tumors on that side were dead, so it did work. It is difficult to tell in a CT though. Hope this helps some. Take care.

Hugs,
-Pam

Dorien…don’t give up – reactivate this link every couple of days. Also, the below leads you to numerous discussions (taken off the search engine):
http://www.cholangiocarcinoma.org/punbb/search.php?search_id=1580498710
Hugs,
Marion

Hey Dorien,
I can tell you a little bit. My Doctor and I chose to do chemo embolization because of my circumstances. Everyone is different. I’ve never been officially staged but my guess is stage 4 since I have a tumor in my liver plus satellites in there, some lymph node involvement and bone mets. I was diagnosed 1/12. I did a drug study for unknown primary to start, then after CC diagnosis switched to Gem/Cis.
I have been on a chemo break for about 2 months.
I have one larger tumor in the left lobe of the liver and it is really high in the dome which is very difficult to access so that was part of the reason for the chemo embo.
I had it done about a week ago on 8/15. The procedure is very straight forward and I was aware of very little or just didn’t care. They had a bit of trouble getting through my very small arteries but once they got through everything worked fine. I was in the hospital overnight….I had no nausea, some mild pains more related to my bone mets rather than the procedure. I was really tired for 2 days and pretty much just felt better lying down. As they said I felt minor flu like. By Day 4 I could get up and around and after a week back to normal. I did get a hematoma at the insertion site but otherwise all is good.
I won’t know until Sept 16 when I get my follow up MRI and CT scan how well it worked.
Hope this helps.
Cathy