Suspicion that treatment hasn’t worked for me

Hello Neil , I’m sorry to hear this . I’m going through the same with my partner who has stage 4 oesophageal cancer, which has spread to surrounding lymph nodes. It’s a real shock to the system. His tumour is very big . He’s been struggling to digest food again, so he’s had a stent fitted only last Monday , he’s been in pain since . He’s now in hospital as we speak as his stent has had to be adjusted . Let’s hope it works for him . Having no visitors is sending him mental ! He wants to be home . I feel heartbroken and helpless ! 
Talk to your partner , she will appreciate it more if you do . 
good Luck and take care x 

Hi Neil. 

So sorry to hear that your symptoms have started again. My dad was in the same position as you his tumour is inoperable as it has grown around his pulmonary artery and he also had chemoradiation last year. In his case the chemoradiation was unable to cure the cancer but it did shrink it back and the cancer was inactive for over a year. Unfortunately now it has spread and we are at the stage of discussing our next treatment options. Which so far are 12 weeks of a chemotherapy that is usually used for bowel cancer but honestly the outlook for this isn’t great for us. Sorry that this is not the news that you will want to hear!

As hard as it is for your family you need to talk to them about it, people are stronger than you think and you are much stronger together than you are facing it alone. If I have learnt one thing from my dad is that it takes a village. Lean on people talk to friends family and colleagues because people want to help they just don’t know how to sometimes and it really helps having different people to be able to talk to.

There are also lots of resources and support for your wife is she is struggling with your diagnosis. My mum was the exact same and she lost both of her parents around my dads diagnosis so it is important for everyone to get as much help as they need.

Always here if you need someone to talk to,

A 

Hi Neil, I’m sorry to hear this, it’s such a stressful time for us and all our families and friends. I can only tell you the things that are similar to our cases I don’t know if it’ll help, I’m never sure what to write as all of us are different and our treatment paths are all different with differing results. I had radiotherapy for cancer on my og junction which was stage 2, I was 42yo at the time. I had 21 sessions over 28 days, I can’t remember the strength but it definitely wasn’t 60gy I think possibly 40gy but not 100%. I had one session of chemo before, but this was stopped as I had a bad reaction. Like you 2 weeks after I finished were the worst, but then everything seemed to go great, swallowing problems completely resolved, felt great went back to work, my first scans and endoscopy showed complete remission. However 6 months later despite further clear scans and endoscopy, the swallowing problems and pain returned, I immediately contacted my team and was booked in for investigation, all that was found in my case was a build up of scar tissue at the site of where the radiotherapy had took place. Still no cancer I was offered a dilation which I didn’t have because the symptoms weren’t to bad, I was told that scar tissue could form years after the treatment had finished.  Unfortunately my cancer has returned and spread to my stomach, but when this did happen it was a bit of a surprise as I had no further symptoms/pain and was just picked up from a biopsy on a 6 monthly endoscopy. It was the most confident I’d been going into an endoscopy. Keeping my fingers crossed for you.