i'm rich my wife has bowel cancer that has spread to liver and lungs . no one has told me what the outcome could be or what stage that is very new to this confused !
Hi I'm 60 year old female was diagnosed last august bowel cancer then spread to liver and small nodules on lungs ..in October I started chemotherapy to try shrink tumour in liver as was not operable then . finish this course chemo had more scans and been told reasonable response from chemotherapy .see oncologist on Friday hope for news of surgery .we were not told a lot .but you should have specialist. Nurse you can contact .we were told be positive what else can you do . chemo is not nice but manageable..waiting for results and info is very hard we had wait quite a while .mine was picked up by bowel screening other wise I wouldn't have known .good luck to you both don't know if any of this is helpful .try to just deal with each thing as it comes along .I don't ask too many in-depth questions I have enough in my head .don't want know every detail and they won't /can't tell you anyway
Please remember that everyone is different so what I'm about to say may not be the same for your wife. It all depends on how aggressive the cancer may be, if its only small or not etc. The best person to ask would be the oncologist, such questions like are they aiming to cure her cancer or not? Is it incurable but treatable? Etc!
So here goes... My Dad was suffering symptoms for a whole year, going back and forth to the doctors who would then send him to the hospital. He had tests and scans and apparently everything came back fine. So in the end he pushed for another scan and then in April 2015 he was called to the hospital to receive his results. That day he was diagnosed with incurable bowel cancer which had spread to his lungs and liver and was classed as stage 4. They explained that they wouldn't be able to cure his cancer because it had metasised to his lungs and nothing could be done because the cancer was like tiny grains of sand all over both lungs. So he was classed as 'incurable' but treatable. This meant that they couldn't get rid of his cancer with any type of treatment and yes he would die eventually however it was treatable with palliative chemotherapy which would hopefully try and stop the cancer from spreading further and to try and prolong his life for as long as possible. Apparently my mum was told that my Dad's life expectancy was 2 years but she refused to tell anyone including my Dad. After all it's only an estimation there's nothing to say someone can't outlive that by far. A few months after diagnosis he had really bad stomach pains and was rushed to hospital they said he had a bowel obstruction and needed emergency surgery, if left he would die. He had 75% of his bowel removed and managed to avoid needing a colostomy bag. Although they managed to remove the cancer from his bowel during that surgery it made no difference to the outcome as it was in the lungs and liver. He was on/off palliative chemotherapy for the next 18 months up until January last year. He was doing incredibly well and looked great too. His CT scan for an update showed the cancer was stable and hadn't grown any and had even shrunk a little. So he was given a 3 month break from chemo until his next round. But in March he started behaving out of character and we found out in April the cancer had spread to his brain. The thing with CT scans is they don't check the brain area and unfortunately nothing was picked up until it was too late. He was then classed as terminal with a life expectancy of 6 months or less. My Dad passed away in August at 65 years of age. He lived for 2 years and 4 months from diagnosis. He would have probably had at least another couple of years if it hadn't of gone to his brain which is quite rare by the way. He was just very unfortunate.
Everybodies story is different. And everybody responds differently to treatments. As I said before the only person who will know anything is the Doctor himself.
If you want to ask any questions please don't hesitate.
so sorry for your loss. My husband was diagnosed with bowel cancer in Jan 2010 managed to live okay (after ops to bowel, liver and lungs) until it spread to his brain last year. Unfortunately was misdiagnosed by GP as labyrynthitis - even though GP knew he had metastatic cancer. to cut a long story short if husband had had a brain scan once in a while he may still be here (and of course if the GP had been a bit more on the ball!!) and NHS would not be out of pocket to the tune of thousands of pounds for the cost of home care - hospital bed, 2 types of mattress, District nurses 3 times a day, council carers 3 times a day for 6 weeks it took for him to die as they stopped the chemo when he overbalanced at home (loss of balance was his symptom) plus the benefits that i was able to claim because of his condition. I don't think spread to brain is as rare as NHS make out, but why won't they just do a brain scan once in a while??
