Husband newly diagnosed
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Hi and an official welcome. I hope you got that other email I sent you with a couple of Calif. Hospitals on there. Please know this is absolutely the best thing you can do and I know you will get replies tomorrow as our East Coast is probably asleep now. Good to see you here now as part of our family.
Dear Surfer1,
Your husband’s doctor must be brilliant. I had blood work done many times, but my doctor suspected nothing. On 5/29/13, I was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, inoperable, Stage IV. Doctors told me that blood work would not show a problem with the liver unless the tumor was pressing against another part of the body. The tumor eventually blocked bile ducts and caused jaundice and severe itching. They did blood work and my liver enzymes were bad Through a cat scan it was discovered I had a 6cm mass on the liver with vein involvement and metastisis. I AM SO HAPPY your doctor discovered your husband’s cancer in Stage I and he is tolerating chemo. That is great news. I needed time to think about chemo, Cis/Gem, and have decided to proceed with the treatment although chances of it helping me are very small because I am in Stage IV. Please let the board know how you and your husband are doing. I wish you the very best and hope your husband has a full recovery.
My husband is 66 and was diagnosed at the beginning of September 2013. It started with routine bloodwork back in july that seemed a little off so his primary care doctor ordered a retest and an ultrasound of his abdomen. Luckily he did that because they saw a mass in his liver. He had a ct scan and the tumor is 6cm. After two biopsies it was confirmed as intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma. They say he is stage 1 and the oncologist at Riverside Medical Clinic suggested chemotherapy (gem/cis) and gave us a referral to dr. Imagawa at UC Irvine (http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=4828) to determine if surgery is an option. Our oncologist has worked with him before with cc patients and wanted us to see him to determine if surgery is an option.
We met with him in september and he said at this point the tumor is too large and close to a vein for surgery but wants to try chemo for two months and then scan him again to see if it has shrunk enough to do surgery. He said it would be a resection to remove approximately 60% of the liver. I’m hoping that will be the case since this cancer has such a grim outlook otherwise.
He is in the middle of his third treatment (once a week for two weeks and one week off). We meet with dr. Imagawa again in mid November and it seems like forever from now. He is tolerating chemo so far. His worst side effect is constipation but we are dealing with that as best as possible. I just hope it is killing his cancer.
Our insurance also contracts with ucla and Cedar Sinai but our RMC doctors haven’t worked with anyone at those facilities that are surgical oncologists that have dealt with cc before so we are hoping uci will give us the news we want to hear in November.
Any suggestions you have would be much appreciated.
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