New to the site, not so new to the disease
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Welcome to the site. I dont have specific experience in what you ask, but I will give you some hope. I had cc in a lymph node and it disappeared with chemo. when I was completely stressed over it being in my node my doctor commented that with cc, it usually isnt as bad as having other cancers in your nodes since cc is usually slow growing. Hope that helps.
Best of luck.
Kris
My husband had Whipple surgery done on Jan 4th, all bile ducts, gall bladder and 1/2 of pancreas removed. Didn’t have to touch his liver. Doctor said they removed everything and were clean margins but same thing, bad cells in the lymph nodes when pathology tests came back. He will be starting radiation and chemo in a week or so and like you, we have no idea what this will mean, Will it kill it….forever, for a while….We are optimistic and until we get bad news, we stay positive! You stay positive too. And like everyone says, it is good to be informed and educated, but live for today and not in the future.
Hi Kathryn,
Thank you for sharing with us all more information on your husbands treatment and surgery, that is quite some journey that Jeff has had! I hope that this information regarding your husbands surgeon may also be of use to others in Canada.
I can’t help you with your specific questions regarding margins and N1 nodes, but I hope that others may help. If you look under the thread you started in the general discussion page you can find some links to other discussions regarding chills and sweats that Marion has posted for you. I am sure that they will be of help. Were you able to get an app with the doctor to see about these chills and sweats?
My best to you and Jeff,
Gavin
Hi,
My name is Kathryn and my husband Jeff was diagnosed the end of May 2009 with cholangiocarcinoma. We live on the west coast of Canada and the top surgeons for western Canada are in Vancouver. Three failed attempts were made to do an ERCP and three failed attempts were made to do the biopsy and shunt placement percataneously (thru the skin). The fourth attempt (or seventh depending on how you look at it) was successful. It was determined that 40% of Jeff’s liver was already atrophied. Of the team of three surgeons who perform the surgery of tumour removal, the first two said “I’m sorry, we cannot do the surgery. It will be about quality of life.”Our three grown kids did the research on the third surgeon, Dr. Buczkowski and found that he was renowned for radical procedures and conservative post surgical care. Just the guy for us. With quite a bit of lobbying, we were successful in convincing him to at least try.
On the eve of Fathers Day and summer Solstice (June 21), Jeff had the surgery where they removed 60% of his liver (including the tumour) and his gallbladder. The surgery was 7 hours and Jeff had a difficult recovery and was unable to leave the recovery room for over 9 hours (usually it’s 2.5-3 hrs we understand). Initially his recovery was difficult. His liver function tests were not optimal and the night after surgery he went “tacky” with a blood pressure drop to 70/50, a heart beat of 149 and a fever of 102 degrees. An emergency CT scan was done as well as a series of other tests and I thought we were going to lose him that night. He stabilized after about 8 hours and began to progress towards healing on day 4 post op.
We brought him home on July 2 and he has had a steady and progressive healing process.
The pathology report says “negative margins’ on the tumour which was great news. The not so great news is the biopsy on the 6 N1 lymph nodes indicated cancer cells in 4 of the 6 lymphs removed.
According to all the clinical studies we’ve looked at the statistics suck for long term survival and so Jeff has been dedicated to a regime of a plant based diet, no sugar, no alcohol, no dairy, daily exercise and infra red sauna. In the past 2 months he’s had more energy and felt better than when he was a teenager.
Recently he has been experiencing unexplained chills and night sweats. This is of course very worrisome and we will be seeing the doctor soon.
I’m wondering if anyone out there has had similar experience with negative margins but N1 nodes with cancer cells? What treatments do you recommend?
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