quick question

[juanita]

The friend I have at work was supposed to have her biopsy yesterday but it was postponed till today or tomorrow. It was for a very large mass on her liver, which they told her they are 99% sure it is cancer. The spot they thought they saw on her lungs they now say is just a shadow. My question is, doesn't cancer in your liver mean you have it somewhere else too? I always thought the liver was like a trashcan and caught all of it from elsewhere. What makes all of this so hard for me to deal with is that Mary only has 40% of her heart working because of heart attacks and congestive heart failure. So the docs all had to confer and see if she could even have any surgery to begin with. What sort of treatment is she probably facing?

[Becky]

Your friend probably has cancer of the liver (cancer in the liver can be primary - meaning that a cell in the liver turned cancerous and then grew into a tumor (just like us having primary breast cancer where a cell in the breast turned cancerous and grew into a tumor).


Secondary liver cancer is when a cancer cell from another part of the body travels to the liver and starts growing there (like a breast cancer cell or a lung cancer cell). Her biopsy will tell if she has primary or secondary cancer and the pathology of the cancer. If it is not cancer of the liver, they will be able to tell if it is lung or breast cancer growing in her liver.

I hope this helps.

Becky