jim-wilde
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Margaret, so sorry to hear of Tom’s recurrence. This CC is insidious and truly nasty. It sounds like you’ve been able to stay pretty positive through the whole mess.
I wish you all the best. Bless you.
Jim
Patty, no one has suggested Zocor had any role in the development of CC, and in fact, the OC and cardiologist at NY Presbyterian who re-prescribed it following chemo both were in contact before and after the chemo protocol was completed. The dosage now is way lower however @ 5 mg/day, since my liver never regenerated. It’s 50% size, working just fine, but we don’t want to stress it. By the way, the OC I see at Presbyterian, specializes solely in digestive diseases, nothing else and is a very sharp lady (as is my cardiologist).
One thing to keep in mind about CC is there is very little useful clinical data, largely because it’s so uncommon (< 2% of all liver cancers). Because millions of people are taking Zocor, there's a pretty good chance of lots of CC sufferers taking it. Even the chemo agent Gemzar, routinely used for CC patients, has little data showing it's effectiveness. Jim
Nancy, sweet news. I’m at 1 1/2 years after surgery and still clean! That’s just terrific news for Ron. Keep the good fortune coming!
Lainy, thank you for your kind words. The only thing I fear with this pernicious disease is that it will return. I’m not sure how one deals with that, but I have to be very grateful for what I have now. Your signature “ATTITUDE is EVERYTHING!” says it all.
Dianne, I too had a left hepatic lobe resection done 4/09. The margins were clear, but the path report mentioned some aggressive tissue was removed. The surgeon initially recommended no further treatment, but my cardiologist wanted me to see an oncologist. She recommended six months of Gemzar, and the surgeon agreed after discussion. Her reasoning was that some of the bad material may have gotten into blood, etc. during surgery. In her view, it was too risky to not do something, although there’s not that much data on CC and chemo agent effectiveness.
I wish you well.
Peggy, I’m new here also. I went through CC last year and was thinking about the jaundice your mother has. Not long before I had surgery, I was fluorescent yellow and itched list crazy. I had an ERCP done and the doctor doing it inserted stents, and lo and behold, a week or so later my color was normal and the itching went completely away. I’. not sure this is an option for your mother, but I thought I would share my experience. If this is considered, it should only be done at a major teaching hospital, as most smaller hospitals don’t do enough to ever get really good at it.
Good luck in caring for your mom.
Dr. Kato performed a left hepatic lobe resection on me April 2009, and he is truly a miracle worker. He is the only one performing ex-vivo procedures, that I know of. An hour long video recounting his backround and some of his miraculous surgeries is available as a free download here:
http://search.pandora.tv/?query=DR%20T%20Kato&tab=program&langsort=&sq=USIf not too many people request, I could ship a CD with the hour long video in mp4 format playable under RealPlayer 11 or Quicktime. My wife and I have cameo appearances (in the middle and at the end) from tape they shot of Dr Kato’s patient visits Oct 09.
See also my post in < Marc "May" be a Candidate by jeffgrieder> thread.
Jeff, I hope everything has progressed well for Marc. I thought I would share my experience with you. I don’t know the tumor size in my case, but the result was a left hepatic lobe resection done at NY Presbyterian April ’09. The surgeon was T. Kato and he removed ~ 50% of the liver during the procedure. I should point out I was a particularly risky patient (70 years old, implanted AICD (pacer/defibrilator) and a severe heart attack survivor who had an emergency bypass and mitral valve repair done in 2001). I suffered about 35% cardiac damage, but was functioning OK after.
The procedure done by Dr. Kato went on for about 12 hours (lots of pathology breaks). I caused the surgical team some excitement by having VT (tachycardia) events during surgery, but no more permanent harm done. There was no evidence of remaining cancer from the post op pathology report, and the surgeon recommended no further treatment. However, the sharp eyed oncologist at NY Presbyterian saw comments by the pathologist that some very aggressive tissue had been removed.
In June ’09 I began six months of Gemzar chemotherapy as a precautionary step.
I am now on a six month cycle of oncology followup at NY Presbyterian, and so far, have been clean.
Good luck to you in the future.
