Update and request for advice

Hi all,

Sorry this is so long. I have posted off and on about my mom and she also registered and posted an intro awhile back. I send her a lot of the posts here because she avoids the internet – not for lack of knowledge, but because reading about the cancer is very upsetting to her. She is having a hard time staying positive right now. I just got off the phone with her and we were both in tears.

History – 56 yo with successful resection of large main tumor of the liver last February – difficult to diagnose as her tumor markers were 0. Within a few months, spots showed up on her liver. At that time they still thought it was hepatocellular carcinoma and were treating her with Nexavar. When she got the “official” diagnosis of cc from Mayo they put her on Gemzar. It worked for awhile. She went to the Mayo in October and saw Dr. Alberts who said she was on the right track with the plan her oncologist lined out. In November the spots started growing again and they put her on Gemzar and Oxaliplatin. But CT scan in January showed growth again. They switched her immediately to Xeloda. She did 2 weeks on Xeloda, CT scan looked ok – no growth, but she had ascites pretty badly. They took her off Xeloda then and drained fluid off.

Today she went in for her angiogram to see if she is a candidate for the Y-90 spheres and drained off more fluid. She didn’t get a good feeling from her interventional radiologist about this as an option as she was leaving the hospital. He didn’t anything at that point about it not being an option, though he said he just needed to formulate his assessment now and if the assessment is good, they will see if insurance will cover it.

I just feel so bad for her. She was so very sad on the phone, we both ended up sobbing. She is scared the ascites is a sign of liver failure and that she is running out of time. To make matters worse her oncologist is out for it sounds like 2-3 weeks due to a family member with cancer. Tomorrow she sees a PA who will let her know if the fluid is malignant.

Path forward? She wants to go back on Xeloda because she felt better on it, her liver function was better and her cancer markers dropped (but they have been unreliable for her to this point), but no advice from her oncologist on this, she will speak to the PA tomorrow on this. Her oncologist is pushing for a clinical trial. She saw another oncologist at the University of Colorado recently who has uggested one of the two clinical trials she has. Y-90 spheres? Who knows where that stands right now.

I don’t think that cyberknife is an option at this point due to number of spots.

Thanks if you stayed with me this long. Are there any suggestions? What would you do?

Thanks, April