Mark: I don’t know too much about this area, but I recall that Claudine from this forum has been down this road with her husband, and while I’m not sure they achieved remission of his bone met, I believe it’s been controlled locally for a number of years. You may want to reach out to her to see if s...

Sounds good! As far as the immune system goes, it’s def good to be female. Us men weren’t built to last like you are!

Well, the checkpoint inhibitor wouldn’t likely matter to you anyway, since you are KRAS. I assume you know this, but the success of this kind of therapy, at least when it comes to the potential abscopal effect, is optimized when your immune function is good. IMO that doesn’t necessarily mean “supple...

Skimom: This approach looks very interesting. As I am sure you know, it’s shown very good results in terms of local control but seems to have significantly enhanced abscopal effects as well, at least according to some studies. Are they using a checkpoint inhibitor with it? This looks really promisin...

Sleeping with a pump is not an issue. Put it in a safe place with the line clear. Back sleeping is better, but side sleeping is fine—the lines can be adjusted to give you slack. Don’t do vigorous gymnastics whilst in bed. Even if something happens it will just beep, then you’ll go in and get it fixed.

FB is just a data mining/marketing engine, which leads to the issues cited by Rob above and other downsides. This forum is far, far superior because it has good motives and is not just a data mining operation, but it is difficult to compete with name recognition and “functionality.” I, too, have not...

Sorry, just realized one other thing. Your sig isn’t clear about your initial cancer or surgical procedure. You note RT and “colo-rectal surgery,” but usually those two process don’t leave a rectum behind, with most radiated tissue removed (most often via TME). That would be a different picture than...

Here’s a really good article on RP. Of course, I have to re-iterate that the in the Stage 4 context *everything* is more complex, so I wouldn’t just assume this is your problem, but the description and your doctor’s attitude suggest that it may be. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC457537...

The most likely candidate here is radiation proctitis. It is common after rectal RT. There are acute and chronic presentations, with this sounding like the latter. It can start years after therapy. I was diagnosed with it after my IMRT, and it continues years later. Fortunately for me, mine is limit...

Sorry to hear this, Beach. I know you’re an informed, active participant in your treatment and will get on top of this asap. I hope you get the best possible resolution of this current uncertainty and have good luck from there!

Rob: Agree, but why run the test if you’re not going to treat? (Assuming monitoring will be the same, anyway.) My only point was that that decision made me question the oncologist’s strategic perspective generally.

Utahgal7: For what it’s worth, and while I’m a big proponent of perioperative chemo in the Stage 4 context (did it big time with my recent lobectomy), its value is not fully confirmed, and it is definitely not viewed as curative by most, even in the oligometastatic context (w/surgery). So I wouldn’t...

Don’t know if you’re one for the studies, but here’s one from 2020 (of course, every person is different, so at most this is something to talk over with your oncologist):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7039839/

Good question, Mark. Three reasons: (1) One of the reasons I originally chose to go with SBRT was that it was in a central location, very close to, as they euphemistically put it, “hilar structures.” Basically, it looked to be really close to an artery (tried not to think too much about that the nig...

Ok, I get it now. To provide good answers/analogous experiences, however, we would have to have more information. It’s true that progression can sometimes be related to mutations, but there are many factors that have to be considered: (1) What does “quick growth” mean here? Did the size of a met (or...