In January of this year I got an urgent call from Lee, my wife. She suddenly felt as though she was going to have diarrhea and was shocked to learn that she was passing a lot of blood. We went to the hospital, stayed up through the night as she tried to drink what seemed like gallons of Go-Lytely, had a colonoscopy that next morning and discovered a golf-ball-sized tumor in her right colon. Providentially, there was a surgeon available that afternoon to do a resection of Lee’s colon.
We got the news a couple days later that the tumor was cancerous and that one of the twelve lymph nodes that were removed showed signs of cancer. The next week we met with our oncologist to learn that Lee had stage III colon cancer.
The ball was put quickly in motion to begin chemotherapy with Oxaliplatin, Leucovorin and 5FU. We were to go in bi-weekly for 6 months with the hope that we’d then be able to put this all behind us.
In late May, however, we recieved distressing news. Lee had been having discomfort and pain in her right flank. A CAT scan revealed that the cancer had been spreading and had metastasized in several places in her liver. Can I just say that it would have been easier to have been kicked in the face?
We went for a biopsy of the liver mets and an MRI to rule out mets in the brain as a source of the headaches Lee’s been having. We learned that the MRI was clear–thank God. But the liver mets were, indeed, more colon cancer. Why did it continue to spread–and so quickly?
We had a CAT scan in January just before Lee was released from the hospital that only showed two small statistically insignificant blips. Her CEA counts were at ZERO, and probably still are.
Our oncologist immediately switched Lee over to Avastin and Irinotecan (Camptosar) in addition to leucovorin and 5FU. The plan has been for Lee to have CAT scan after four treatments with these drugs.
The first of those scans was in mid-July. It was then we learned that the cancer remained unchanged from the one in May when we learned it has metastasized. That was a relief, but a very unsettling one because the cancer was still there.
Have any of you heard of cancer spreading during chemotherapy? What about Stage IV colon cancer with no CEA?
We haven’t lost hope. But, it’s hard sometimes. The doctor was, and has been, hopeful all along. In fact, every time I try to find out what the latest and greatest is for treatment of colon cancer he already knows about it!
We have a fantastic group of friends at our church. We know that there’s an army of prayer warriors asking God to heal Lee. But, we’re looking for others who would be willing to correspond with us who may have some first-hand experiences with the kinds of disappointments we’ve recently had. We’d love to hear from other Stage IV survivors and fellow fighters!
UPDATE: Lee had a CT scan today, September 20th(2005). We learned from Dr. Young, our oncologist, that the scan revealed that the cancer has grown, once again. He didn’t yet know specifics beyond the radiologist’s report that the tumors have slightly enlarged. However, we took a copy of the scan home with us and could see for ourselves that there has been a disappointing change.
We’ll know more when Dr. Young has had a chance to review the pictures himself and do some research to formulate a plan.
We meet with him this Thursday.
Needless to say, we are dealing with a lot of disappointment and fear.