March 2023, diagnosed with early-stage Bowel cancer, aged 47, from a private healthcare check at work, no symptoms resolved by surgery, no need for chemo. MRI detected lesions on the liver, so I needed chemo, then a liver resection.
Clear for 18 months. Surveillance scan detected new lesions in the liver, spread out this time, so back to chemotherapy, found to have RAS wild type gene halfway through, so additional specific chemo was added to the cocktail.
Oct 25 had Ablation on liver lesions, follow-up decided need SABR radiotherapy, which I will start at the end of the month.
Nov 25 managed to fit in getting married to my partner of 31 years, wish I had done it sooner!
2026 has got to be better, right??? Cancer-free? Honeymoon with husband
Now, creating a F***it list first on the list is a tattoo of my choosing, rather than the soulless dots the radiotherapy team gave me
August 26, Well, that was a short-lived remission, one pesky area on the liver found during surveillance scans, so now waiting for Portacath and Chemo, will possibly need surgery as well. Feeling overwhelmed and angry as I've just begun
Hi Strong lady
I am sorry you are facing a recurrence of your secondary cancer. I am one of the community champions, primarily supporting people on the various breast cancer forums as my primary cancer was breast cancer. I now live with metastatic breast cancer and have had liver involvement. My original diagnosis was early stage cancer but I found I had a single liver met during my original treatment when I had a CT scan for other reasons. I had an ablation. The original met grew back and multiplied and there was another in a different segment. So surgery and further ablation off the table at that point. I then went onto immunotherapy and more chemo, had an adverse reaction that was so problematic I had to stop treatment. Fortunately the treatment had shrunk me back to 2 small mets and they tried ablation again. So far it has held but I am conscious this won’t be forever.
So just wanted to say you are not alone grappling with this sort of thing. It feels a bit like whack-a-mole - deal with a problem through ablation or radiotherapy and then wait for it to pop back up in the same place or elsewhere. I rationalise that each action that reduces cancer load buys more time even if it’s not curative. I am quite prepared to have different systemic treatment if it controls and/or takes me to a level where ablation or SABR can be tried again.
I hope you get the honeymoon. Tattoos are not my thing but I do dislike my radiotherapy dots. Whatever you choose to do, I hope you love it. Wishing you all the best.
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I have metastatic Triple Negative Breast Cancer, in remission
