Liver mets

You should get an appointment with your oncologist to discuss treatment options. 
myself I’m having chemotherapy but I’ve also had some radiotherapy. 

Have you got an appointment to speak to anyone about your condition? I have been diagnosed with bowel cancer and have a meeting with oncology next week to find out when my treatment will start. 

Hi Pauline63 (2b1ec9626d08489a8705c9c0e75860bd 

Welcome to the forum . 
When cancer has spread they generally use a systemic approach first . They want to treat the primary tumour and the spread at the same time including any micro disease . When my mum was first diagnosed I found it hard that they did not go straight to surgery but with hindsight it was chemo that was the big player to begin with in her longevity. They try to stabilise the disease or indeed creat some shrinkage with chemo .

Once they have achieved this they scan again and have another mdt meeting to get the collective heads to investigate the next move .

Depending on the size of the spread they may continue with chemo , send for a surgical opinion on the liver and bowel or look at treatments for the liver like radio frequency ablation . They aim to treat it like a chronic condition with different treatment options .

My own my had chemo over two years and then an extensive liver resection at a centre of excellence. She had 73% remove and never had dither issues with her liver .

She lived for 15 years following a stage 4 diagnosis.

The treatment plan for you is also determined by the size of the spread and your cell types.  If you have had a biopsy take they will tell you what type of cell type you have .

With bowel cancer being one of the more common cancers there are many treatment options available and your team will chat this through with you .

Take care ,

Court 

Hi BariC,

I've already had 3 surgeries and several months of chemotherapy. 

I'm due to start chemotherapy in another 2 weeks or so but have not yet had a date sent.

My liver function tests went up times 10 in 2 weeks. Sounds serious/ fast growing to me. A bit in shock.

Court, thank you for your reply. I didn't know that bowel cancer was relatively common. I survived breast cancer 26 years ago.

The fact that there are plenty of options is reassuring.  If one chemotherapy option makes me too unwell, ( Already happened) I can get put on another one.

Medical staff all great but they don't share these snippets of handy information.  I wish they would.

One other handy thing to know , chemo works best on the bases of cell division . The fast growing nature of liver mets if you are chemo responsive can divide quickly . My mum had a 5 cm met that disappeared off the screen . She was very chemo responsive .

Lung mets can be incredibly slow growing , she had surgery for one of these but no chemo due to chemo not being so effective on slow growing cells .

I am not going to pretend to understand that. But it’s what we were told .

Take care ,

Court 

Thank you for sharing.  That is very good to know.

I have the same , depending on how big your tumour is, if it’s less than 3cm which was what mine was my procedure was an ablation followed buy 12 sessions of six months of FOLFURI chemotherapy, ablation is very straightforward and no big deal, I was in the hospital overnight , no pain at all , great breakfast, obviously if it’s more than 3cm the it’s surgery resection.

im now on my last chemo session, it’s been a long hall but much better than Oxiplatian from when I was fist diagnosed.

i do hope your recovery goes well, it’s a very anxious time we go through.

Take care

phil ️

Thanks Phil, that very helpful news.

I was thinking once it got to your liver you were toast. But sounds like there is good solid treatment out there.

Wish you all the best too.And thank you for taking the time to share.

Pauline

were not toast until we’re toast, keep moving forward a day at a time 

️