Postby JanetHKansas » Sat May 13, 2017 7:08 am
My son's cancer originated in his appendix but is an adenocarcinoma with neuroendocrine features. He has carcinomatosis. He has some lymph nodes that were positive. His cancer was found when he obstructed and so he had surgery to relieve his obstruction and sounds like hemi-colectomy was done at that time.
He is being treated by a team who has better than average expertise in a major city in Ohio. As a nurse, you think of second opinions and such but this seems like a strong team to me. The cancer center has been excellent offering not just a lot of expertise from the GI oncology surgeon and the gastric oncologist but also immediate access to palliative care and support services. I have the email of a support nurse I can contact and I have done so.
Scans show stable tumor--no shrinkage after 5 rounds of Folfox.
I am a nurse who has worked in nursing all my life but have not worked in oncology and feel a lot like a stranger in a strange land.
My son is in a post-graduate program in college. He's unmarried. He has really special friends there. Taking the team's recommendation to have him remain in school and be treated there felt, as I often said, on one hand an incredibly life affirming choice and on the other hand, a preposterous idea. Especially when he was immediately post-op and having some convolutions in his post-op course.
I feel comfortable with the team. If he had gotten sick here at home with us in Kansas, we would have sought a second opinion and been glad to find a team like he has in the town he lives in.
My sense is that we are working toward possibility of more surgery, possibly a HIPEC procedure but no one has used that word to me. It looks like people just do successive rounds of chemo and try to keep things either stable or shrinking. I also know right sided tumors are a tougher nut to crack.
Having just undergone that first scan, where the results were relatively good, I've decided that scans are going to be like having a several weeks long emotional disruption. That was tougher than I anticipated.
So I guess if anyone has experience with right sided tumors, I'd appreciate hearing from you but also I learn a lot from people who just undergoing treatment.
Mother to son, diagnosed Stage IV with adenocarcinoma originating in the appendix in January 2017
Hemi-colectomy for obstruction at that time
Carcinomatosis
February, 2017 to April 2017 Folfox x6, May 2017 5FU plus leucovorin