Liver Resection/ post liver resection

Heather,

I think you should be happy about that 90% estimate! I know these things are relative, but I’d take your surgeon’s statement as something like, “I’m very confident about this, but one can never say with 100% certainty.” I had multiple good-sized lesions in both lobes and multiple lymph nodes. My surgeon said 65% chance of complete success. It took two surgeries, and the first was long and “dicey” as he put it. So I tend to think his aggressiveness, persistence, and skill made up that other 35%. (-:

Mark

Hi Heather,

My sister who was 41 had her resection aborted. When she went for surgery, her tumour was more extensive than the scans and imaging had shown and her surgeon who thought pre surgery that it had been there for about a year said that once he saw her liver, the tumour had been growing for years. Also, Prior to her surgery, she had portal vein embolisation which was basically where the blood supply to the right side of her liver was shut off to make the left side grow. This was done as her tumour through the right and mid section of her liver only left her with 14% of her liver unaffected and what was to be left behind had to grow to 25% to avoid liver failure. The gamble of doing the embolisation procedure was that the tumour might grow rapidly during the 4 weeks it took tp grow her liver. Unfortunately it did grow and along the entire length of her liver and left the surgeon with no possible way of removing tumour without leaving exposed tumour behind.

The surgeon did a stomach bypass though before he finished as he foresaw the potential for an obstruction and thankfully proactively dealt with that for her.

Looking back, the odds were against her from the start, not like the plan the surgeon has for Gordon. There are positive stories here and I know my sister would do the same surgery again if there was any glimmer of hope. Whilst being suitable for surgery is exactly where you want to be with this disease, I understand your anxiety.

Xx

Hi Heather,

There seems to be two parts to your question, the first about aborted resections and the second about recurrence post resection. My experience regarding the first was that Dr. Selby warned that if he opened me up, and say my liver was “peppered” with sub-1 centimeter lesions (not caught by CT), or my larger lesions had grown markedly since the last CT (which already indicated it was going to be hard to get clean margins), he’d have to close me up. My surgery started at 8:00 am. I woke up in ICU at 12 o’clock…but was it noon (meaning aborted surgery) or midnight? I coudn’t ask on a ventilator! Then, from somewhere I heard a nurse say, “We’ll be with you all night.” It was midnight. With a huge sense of relief, I went back to sleep. So, I suppose that question remains until the surgeon gets eyes on it. That’s why often they will do a laproscopic exploration before committing to that long incision for the “open” surgery.

I appreciated that my surgeon was direct with us. His goal was to render me free of visible cancer, which he did with two separate resections. He also said that because of my staging – especially lymph node involvement, recurrence was very likely, and we needed a plan to address it. I did recur one year later, and have undergone multiple treatments to slow progression of the disease as much as possible.

The bottom line though is that 21 months ago I was given 3-6 months to live, and today I am still living with the disease because of surgery. The fact that your physicians think surgery is possible is the best possible news!

Best wishes to you and Gordon. We will be holding you both in our thoughts and prayers on surgery day.

Mark