February 2012 Updates

On February 7th I met with a Radiation Oncologist who performs the Cyber Knife radiation treatment. Great procedure as is usually eliminates the need for surgery and was designed for tumours that are generally non-operable. He is not able to perform this procedure on me because of my tumour location. The small bowel is one organ that cannot withstand high doses of radiation and my tumour is surrounded by small bowel tissue. The risk is too great for the small bowel to collapse or rupture. I have been there once before and it damn near killed me …..couldn’t do that again.

Yesterday I met with my surgeon from Nov 2010 to see if he was able to perform the surgery again and remove the tumour. The tumour has redeveloped in the same area but the shape and location is different. It is now wrapped around the vessels that feed the blood supply to your entire lower body, they cannot jeopardize these vessels. Because of the new location they are unable to operate. He said he could get some of the tumour out but not all so I wouldn’t be any further ahead. He said he does not know of any surgeon globally that would do this surgery. He is going to send my CT scan file to a surgeon in Toronto he calls "aggressive" to get his opinion but he is not optimistic.

Now that surgery has been ruled out I have left a message with the Radiation Oncologist. He said if the surgeon couldn’t operate then he and my oncologist would see if a small dose of daily radiation (regular, not Cyber Knife) with chemo therapy for 5 wks could be an option. We didn’t get into a lot of detail around this process when we met because we had hoped surgery would be the best option. I do know there are side effects of the radiation to the bowel so I will need to outway the risks in this area before I accept this treatment. In the end, the Radiation Oncologist said there is a less than 10% chance that this process would get rid of the tumour. He expects it will shrink but not disappear. Over time the tumour will become resilient to chemo and continue spreading. Chemo will not cure Stage 4 cancer, they hope it will just slow the process down.

I have another CT scan next Thursday, meet with my regular Oncologist March 6th, and I am hoping to hear back soon from the Radiation Oncologist & the surgeon in Toronto.

Bye for now and yes, I realize there is always "hope".

Karen