30 A.T
We have been home now for just over a week and Eric feels great. We have seen both our doctors at Kaiser and UCSF. They agree he looks great. The surgeon at UCSF said Eric was still at high risk of recurrence, do to having a thrombus in a portal vein. We still have some work to do.
We have been home now for just over a week and Eric feels great. We have seen both our doctors at Kaiser and UCSF. They agree he looks great. The surgeon at UCSF said Eric was still at high risk of recurrence, do to having a thrombus in a portal vein. We still have some work to do.
China doctors are saying he should do preventive Chemo. The American doctors disagree. The American doctors say we'll just watch you closely and if something develops, they we'll discuss Chemo. Watching closely mean CT Scans every 3 months. We are kind of leaning to preventive. We have already seen where waiting sends us. Who knows, this might put us in a position to go back to Shanghai for Chemo. That would be sad.
posted by TransplanTraveler @ 6:11 PM
2 Comments:
Hi there,
Got to this website from the Cancer forums. Very happy to hear of the turn of events for your husband.
I am however, concerned with the exclusion of preventive chemo from your US doctors. Let me share a bit of my own story.
2 years back, i had a single tumour in my liver which was subsequently removed via surgery in Stanford Hospital. I recovered well, everything seemed normal and i was simply told chemo was unnecassary. A year later, I had a recurrence and lung metastases. I am now in advanced stage.
An oncologist told me recently that I should have gone on a course of preventive chemo after my surgery. It is true that chemo for liver cancer is dismally ineffective and the side effects are a risk. But he said they should have erred on the side of caution.
Thinking about it now, i understand the point of view from both schools of thought. One is prescribing chemo just to be safe. The other is thinking it's not worth taking risks for something of dubious benefits. But the key thing is this: it should have been the patient who makes the decision (after being explained the pros and cons of each option of course).
So i'm thinking that you guys should seriously consider whether you want the chemo or not ASAP and make a decision, rather than leaving it to the doctors. Realistically, it probably would have little effect with quite some loss in quality of life but you may still want to do it anyway.
Good luck!
- seage
Oh and BTW, are there any contact details for the Chinese medical institution you went to? May want to see if there's anything they can do for me as well. Thanks.
You can email me at choen.hoe.cheang@intel.com.
-seage
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