Just had RFA to liver met on Friday...

Hello Everyone,
Just wanted to share some first-hand info about RFA.I had the procedure on Friday morning & was home by 5pm that evening. I feel pretty well, now that the general anesth. has cleared my head, but left my stomach still a little sluggish.
I'm really pleasantly surprised how well I feel! I had a little soreness, very little soreness in my upper abdominals-like I'd done an ab workout-yesterday, but mostly just itchy from the tape & the healing of the incision (tiny,5mm).Liver feels great-it's hard to believe they zapped that thing for 14 mins & heated it up to 100 deg, then burned back the path to cauterize the blood vessels as they exited the liver.
I'll have a follow up CT/PET in 4 weeks; until then, we won't know the true success of the procedure, though the doc feels confident. Because this spot was located between 2 major vessels in my liver, the biggest concern is that they weren't able to get the temp of the probe high enough to sufficiently ablate the spot-the goal is ~115 deg-they were only able to heat up to 100 deg in my case.I'm keeping my fingers crossed...
All in all a good experience, hopefully 4 weeks from now NED will be firmly in my grasp & I plan on holding on longer than year!
Keep the faith!
Jessica

[StephN]

Wonderful, and such a TINY incision.

Thanks for the description and glad you feel good now. We could ALL probably use a little ab workout - the liver is larger than many people realize and covers a lot of our front surface area.

NED is just a Pet/Ct away!

Great news, Jessica...happy recovery!

Thank you for posting Jessica! RFA is one of the procedures I have considered, if the chemo doesn't zap the last 2 small liver tumors I have left.

I really appreciated the detailed description.

[Lolly]

YEAH JESSICA! You're on the road to recovery, and hopefully will be dancing a jig with NED again...I'm glad to hear the procedure was so amazingly easy on you, wow, it sure makes it less scary to think about if I ever need it done. I'm keeping you in my thoughts and prayers, you take it easy even if you do feel relatively well, you still need to baby yourself for awhile!

Love, Lolly