just so strong and brave, he is fighting this!!!

 my lovely brother in law became ill last July, he repeatedly went to his G.P with upper abdomen pain however was always sent home with the G.P saying it was muscular pain etc. In September he was admitted to hospital as the pain was getting worse, C.T scan identified pancreatic cancer. He then went to Liverpool to have most of his pancreas removed and recovered well until a few weeks later he fell ill with infection and had to have more major surgery as he some type fluid build up around the remainder  of the pancreas, he then developed septa Emia and was in intense care. He recovered slowly after such a battle. We had light at the end of a very dark tunnel as the histology was good and he was cancer free. The happiness was short lived as a month later he was re-scanned as he was starting a clinical trial and to our devastation we were told the cancer had spread to his liver. He has just had his third lot of chemo and is doing amazing, gaining weight and no symptoms of liver cancer at all. His oncologist was shocked to see how well he is doing today and has not really said about how much chemo treatments he is going through have. My brother in law is only 50 and has a lovely family, I keep staying positive for my sister and her husband. Can anybody share any advice on further treatments please.

 

 

 

  • Sorry about my spelling meant septacimia, something wrong with my key board. Can I also add all his bloods are totally normal too. Looking at the c.t scan results you would think they are from another person, should we request a biopsy or more investigations?. As I keep saying we are going to fight this and grateful for any advice given

  • Hi Piglet,

     

    Really sorry to hear that your brother in law has had pancreatic cancer that has spread.

    I'm a little confused because in one post you say that his cancer was picked up on a scan but on the other his CT scan was normal ?

    It is odd that in some forms you can have cancer that hardly seems to affect someone's day to day fitness but it is working away underneath.

    My wife was one of those - she had peritoneal cancer (Abdomen lining) and for 3 years she was pretty much at 100% capable - only the effects of the chemo would hit her for a few days - then things went south pretty fast 3 weeks before she died she walked across the field with us for more than a mile!

    In that way we were very lucky as a lot of people are much more seriously affected.

    You know I would always say that we're fighting Darwin here - you have a cancer that is dividing and mutating fast. The Chemotherapy hits that ability for cells to divide - of course it also hits your good cells but they don't divide so fast so it has a greater impact on the cancer - but it still hits you.

    Of course the mutations mean that the few cancer cells that are immune to a chemo get more and more important until the chemo stops working - then you need to go on to another one until the same thing happens there.

    There are new types of treatment called biological therapies that are smarter -but they are also quite expensive for the benefit they bring and they are difficult to get on the NHS 

    www.macmillan.org.uk/.../Biologicaltherapies.aspx

    There is also a lot of work going on in immunotherapies that he might be suitable for

    WARNING: the below link is very informative on trials and advanced treatments so I've posted it but starts with some pretty blunt facts and figures about pancreatic cancer so you might want to only read it when you're feeling strong

    www.cancerresearch.org/.../pancreatic-cancer

    It is very good news that his bloods are normal if he wants to try trials because that is something that can be a problem - they wanted to try my wife on trials because she was so fit at the time but her bloods were just not good enough.

    Best of luck to him