This is the second blog in the Neuroendocrine Cancer Nutrition series. In Blog 1, I focussed on Vitamin and Mineral deficiency risks for patients. Those who remember the content will have spotted the risks pertaining to the inability to absorb particular vitamins and minerals. This comes under the general heading of Malabsorption and in Neuroendocrine Cancer patients, this can be caused or exacerbated by one or more of…
Background
Although initially considered rare tumours up until 10 years ago, the most recent data indicates the incidence of NETs has increased exponentially over the last 4 decades and they are as common as Myeloma, Testicular Cancer, and Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. In terms of prevalence, NETs represent the second commonest gastrointestinal malignancy after colorectal cancer.
In fact, the graph of the SEER database…
Despite learning early on in my journey that nutrition was going to be a challenge, I sensed the initial focus of my treatment was on getting rid of as much tumour bulk as possible and then controlling (stabilising) the disease through monitoring and surveillance. Clearly I'm happy about that! However, it eventually became clear that the impact of this constant treatment/controlling, meant that some of the less obvious…
I enjoyed reading the recent blog written by Dr Eric Liu entitled The Complications of Surgery. In his article, Dr Liu, himself a surgeon, explains that surgery comes with risks and patients should be made aware and able to discuss these risks with their doctors.
This got me thinking about my own experience which goes back to the autumn (fall) of 2010 when I first met my surgeon. At that time, there were a few articles…
Last month I produced a blog post "Stable is my new normal". It's important to emphasise that 'Stable' for me (and many others) does not mean cured - nor does it mean any kind of remission. It simply means the disease is "under control" with tests and scans showing the cancer hasn't changed over time.
With incurable cancers such as metastatic Neuroendocrine Tumours, 'Stable' is normally…
