Feedback and Silly Question

Discussion Board › Forums › General Discussion › Feedback and Silly Question

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • July 20, 2008 at 3:13 am #20944
    debrah
    Spectator

    hi irene, i think i emailed you about dr jenkins and i do recall hearing the name dr lewis while at lahey clinic…chemo brain is not helping me remember There were many different drs checking in on me while i was hospitalized and i liked all of them…which is not something i would say lightly but they are great! so i would suggest you go to lahey.org and click on liver transplant or liver surgery and you will see that dr lewis and dr jenkins were the first to perform a successful liver transplant in 1983 in new england etc. at lahey clinic they all work as a team and that benefits everyone…especially us. good luck and feel free to email if you need any more info. deb

    July 19, 2008 at 11:31 pm #20943
    jclegg
    Member

    Irene,

    I second the other Joyce – Butch has intraheptic bile duct cancer – no symtoms (well – he had started having slight abdominal pain). The jaundice, blockage, I believe – comes with extrahepetic. But – the darn stuff is there, and wreaking damage.

    Joyce

    July 19, 2008 at 9:30 pm #20942
    jmoneypenny
    Member

    Hi Irene,
    I don’t have any authoritative answers, but my mother was symptom free and had no bile duct blockage, and they said it was because she had INTRAhepatic cc, the kind that is in the bile ducts that are inside the liver, as opposed to the bile ducts outside the liver. Hope that helps, for what it’s worth.
    Best of luck to you!
    Joyce

    July 18, 2008 at 2:43 pm #20941
    jeffg
    Member

    Lisa … Glad to hear your tumors are still responding to treatment. I agree there is hope !
    Jeff G.

    July 17, 2008 at 4:45 pm #20940
    lisa
    Spectator

    Irene – no question is a silly question. This cancer works itself out so differently in so many different cases.

    Like you, I’m in situation #2.

    Yesterday I had a CT scan which shows my tumor continues to respond to Gemzar/Xeloda combination and is shrinking slightly.

    There is hope!

    July 17, 2008 at 1:34 pm #20939
    kristin
    Spectator

    To answer question #2: The type of cancer it is depends on the kind of cell that went “haywire” in the first place. The tumor may be in your liver, but it was started by a bile-duct cell that developed wrong. So for instance a woman with breast cancer might also get tumors in her lungs and liver, but those tumors are still breast cancer– they’re made of breast cancer cells that went somewhere else. Does that make sense?

    We all have so much to learn! Just try to do it in bite-sized pieces, so you don’t get ovewhelmed.

    My best wishes to you!

    Kristin

    July 17, 2008 at 2:42 am #1365
    irenea
    Member

    HI All:

    Again thanks for guidance. Like all of you I’ve had to become a CC expert overnight, and it’s difficult.

    1. There is much positive feedback on this forum about Dr. Jenkins at Lahey Clinic. Has anyone has experience with the other Lahey surgeon, Dr. Lewis?

    2. This is one of the things I ought to understand but I don’t. I am one of the folks who remain symptom free; while I do have a positive tumor marker (and a big tumor in the liver) my regular bloodwork remains perfectly “normal.”

    I am told that the reason my numbers remain good and I do not have symptoms is that my bile duct is not at all blocked. So the question is this: how is it this is bile duct cancer (as opposed to hepatocellular, for example) if I do not have cancer in the bile duct?

    Thanks —

    Irene

  • Author
    Posts
Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • The forum ‘General Discussion’ is closed to new topics and replies.