As Mmum says, I have been in the same boat. If you click on my name, you can see the short story in my biography. The blog is obviously the longer version and might be a tough read for someone going through something similar, but it has a happy ending as I reached a good place. First diagnosed with my primary in early 22 and found to be metastatic in September of the same year, I have been in stable remission for over 2 years now. Next scan in March bringing the usual trepidation.
The main stroke of luck I had was having a tumour that was PD-L1 positive, so I qualified for treatment with Pembrolizumab. Do you know your status on this yet? I think it’s a game changer of a drug for those for whom it works - although when it works well it can also cause a lot of collateral damage. I did get a lot of collateral damage, which took a lot of medical management to overcome. I still live with some of the consequences of that but it’s a small price to pay for clearing the cancer.
If your liver mets are small and also small in number, ablation can also play a role. I went through this twice - first, unsuccessfully, before the pembro, and later to clear out what was left (probably only scar tissue) after the pembro. It takes a couple of weeks to recover from but it’s not too bad.
Hi Coddfish, although I obviously do not suffer from the same cancer, I dived into your blog to read about your experience with Pembrolizumab as I am currently on Atezolizumab which has a more or less identical risk profile. I ended up reading nearly the whole blog because many of the situations and eperiences you describe are universal in our world and your wry writing style also entertained me. Recommend to everyone and congratulations!
