My mother colorectal cancer

filomenka · New User Joined: 23 Oct 2008 Posts: 3

Hi everyone,

I just joined the forum. My story is about my mother's fight against her colorectal cancer.

She is 62 and lives in a small town in the south of Italy (which makes things a little more complicated). My brothers and sister live very close to her but I live 1400 km away and I'm very happy we live in an era of low cost airlines, broadband Internet and cheap phone calls.

She was diagnosed cancer almost 5 years ago, was under surgery twice and has already been treated with Folfox and Folfiri. We know we're running out of ammunitions but we keep hoping.

The surgeon of the second operation could only tell us: enjoy the time with her, we're all in the hands of God: the cancer had infected the peritoneal liquid, little nodules could not be removed and she had a couple of spots on the liver.

But mom is a fighter, and doesn't let the cancer pull her down. She didn't stop working (last month she retired, though), looked splendid at my sister's wedding and of course keeps worrying all the time about us children Wink

She always tolerated the chemo (relatively) well. Her cancer is very aggressive but also very sensitive to chemo, so everytime she's treated, it shrinks.

She was given Avastin only very late and I wasn't very convinced about the explanations for this (Italian regulation, hospital out of stock...).
We've got second and third opinions and I've always tried my best to double check what the doctors told us. But our constraint is that mom didn't want to be taken far away for treatment (elsewhere in Italy or abroad), so we're trying to do our best with the local oncologists.

Current doubts: what to do next? Can she still be given Avastin? Will we be able to use Erbitux? What other shots do we have?
What about the research on DCA (our oncologists are very dismissive - I hate this attitude: I'm not a doctor but I'm not stupid either).

Thanks for reading this rather long post. I'll keep reading the contributions to the forum.

And pray.

Filomena

brainman · Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 12:32 pm Post subject: Re: My mother colorectal cancer

Hi Filomena. I am very sorry about your mother's advanced Colorectal Cancer. At the same time, I am inspired by her fighting spirit that has carried her this far.

I know very little about Colorectal Cancers so cannot even comment of her options. In general though, it sound like her oncologists has been rather aggressive so I suspect they are thinking about what else to do. I am sorry that they are dismissive towards you.

You and your mother are in my thoughts and prayers.
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galextra · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2008 10:05 pm Post subject: Re: Spreading Colorectal cancer

Hi Filomena

While cancer has various labels and manifests its ugly self
in any and all parts of the body...we make it too complicated...
It's rather easy to take care of...if one understands the underlying
principles of disease and health.

My friend's sister easily overcame breast and colon cancer...in one month...

Regards,

Gary

a.traversy@gmail.com
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