Cancer Treatment Options Forum - June 12th, 2011 - 5 Comments
My dad has esophageal, lung, and liver cancer. Starting chemo tuesday hoping for remission. Can he beat this?
I don’t anything else, but am worried. We are estranged. He is 61 and sounds weak.
He has advanced disease and one need to be realistic.
Treatment options are just palliative and that also depends on how much he will tolerate as he is already weak.
You need to talk to his oncologist for full detail.
That will be tough, but anything is possible..
Once cancer spreads to multiple organs it is very difficult to treat.
The chemo may buy him some more time but a cure is not realistic.
Sorry.
Anythings possible. Just start talking to him and make him feel confutable and maybe it’ll give him the strength to try to fight it.
While anything is possible, in general chemotherapy is used only to slightly prolong life and make it more comfortable, when a patient has cancer that has spread to many different organs. It’s very difficult to eliminate cancer that is widespread, and chemotherapy generally isn’t a cure because it never completely kills off every single cancer cell. So, chances are that the cancer will eventually catch up with him.
Note that chemotherapy can be curative for certain types of cancers detected early. However, that doesn’t appear to be your father’s case.