Chemo after liver resection? How much...?

[jessica]

Hi Folks~
Jessica here...it's been a week since my surgery & recovery is going well. Just feel bloated in the belly & my incision is itchy!!
As I mentioned the liver resection went very well. My surgeon removed the entire R lobe & a little of the left, totalling ~55%. The intial scope showed the rest of the abdomen clean & the intraoperative sonogram showed the rest of the R lobe completely clean, clean too!He did find 2 spots in the L lobe, but completely benign. They did not have to resect & repair the Vena Cava, Thank God & were able to leave the adrenal gland, but the gall bladder had to go. I'm waiting to hear back on the final path, but by all preliminary reports, clean margins!
So I'm home now...tucked in. My mom's here taking wonderful care of me & my animals. I meet w/my onc next week & the surg. onc too to make a plan.
I'm told to anticipate more chemo, but not much I hope...The SurgOnc. says with colon ca pts, they have ~4mos tx after liver resection but this is a "completely different animal" & we'll leave it up to my onc.
I know there must be very little data, so I thought I'd come here and ask from the folks who know...
If you've had liver resection, how much chemo did you have post op?
I'm going to start sniffing around, see if I can find any info, but I'd like to know what to anticipate. I'm really hoping that I won't have to do more than 4 weeks!
Thanks in advance~
Hope everyone is enjoying these last few days of 2005!
Keep the Faith!

[al from Canada]

Dear Jessica,

Irene from Tampa had a resection, send her a message asking her what she had.
Good Luck,
Al

[Kim in CA]

Hi Jessica,


Congratulations on getting that big surgery behind you! I had the left lobe of my liver resected in 2002 and was in the hospital for 7 days, so you really did well getting out of there in 5!

I don't remember the particulars of your case, but I didn't have any chemo after my surgery. My tumor markers did climb about 6 months after my resection and even though scans failed to show anything, my Onc and I decided I would go on Xeloda along with my Herceptin for awhile to see if the markers would come down. Well, I crashed on the Xeloda and ended up in the hospital for a week. I had diarhea, fever, was dehydrated and my blood counts had plummeted. They put me on four different antibiotics to get things back under control. At least my tumor markers dropped back down in a big hurry! I have been NED in my body ever since. I did however have a brain tumor this summer that was successfully treated with Gamma Knife.

I still wonder about the Xeloda. My Onc said my body couldn't metabolize the drug and that is why it built up to such toxic levels and almost did me in. He said I would never be able to use it again. I have to wonder though, because I have heard that many people cannot tolerate it unless the dosage is reduced by as much as 50% sometimes. So if the need should ever present itself, I would have to dig into this further.

Anyway, didn't mean to get off track! I guess I was just wondering why they are wanting to give you chemo after surgery. Do you still have activity elsewhere? Chemo was never mentioned after my surgery, as my pathology reports came back completely clean. I did miss my Herceptin treatment while I was in the hospital though. Other than that, I have been on it nonstop since Oct. 2001.

Wishing you continued good healing, Kim in CA

[jessica]

Hi~
Thanks for your response Kim!
As for doing more chemo, my surgical onc suggested that I should anticipate more, but my regular onc. & I have not discussed it yet. We meet next Thursday, but I'm anxious to go in armed with as much info as possible(as always!)
I think it's one of those once your Stage IV we always assume there micrometas somewhere & especially with a surgery like liver resection, the immune system's a little supressed, possibly giving way to any rogue little cells out there...blahblahblah.
I really have no idea what my onc's going to want to do. I'm afraid to even hope she'll say "Let's give you a break from chemo...."
From my assessment, there's only been evidence of that one, single spot since June 2003. In Sept 2003, I was totally NED for a year. Then in Sept 2004, only that one single spot came back. And for the past year, we've just kept beating back that one spot, with nothing else surfacing.
So now that it's gone, what's left to chemo?
I guess there's no right answer...but it sure helps to have your input to help maneuver this decision!
Hope you have a wonderful New Year's Eve - quiet or crazy!
Keep the Faith!!