Metastatic Colon Cancer - The Outlook Brightens
For a person with metastatic colon cancer, which is colon cancer that has spread beyond the colon to other parts of the body, the situation may feel hopeless and overwhelming. But a recently published review of survival rates after metastatic colon cancer diagnosis brings new hope that this disease can be more effectively managed with newer treatment options. The results of this review, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology online May 26, 2009, indicate that in the period from 1990 through 2006, the length of survival after metastatic colon cancer diagnosis has improved dramatically.
Between 1990 and 1997, the researchers noted that the median, overall length of survival held steady at 14.2 months. However, in the following years, median survival improved notably, to 18 months from 1998 to 2000, and then to 18.6 months from 2001 to 2003. The overall median length of survival improved most dramatically, to 29.2 months, for patients diagnosed with metastatic colon cancer from 2004 to 2006. Also encouraging is that the 5-year survival rate more than doubled from 9.1% in the early years of the study to 19.2% for patients diagnosed in 2001 to 2003. The improvements in survival are due to a combination of more effective chemotherapy medications and surgery to remove colon tumors that have spread to the liver.
Years of Life
The bottom line is that even after receiving an original diagnosis of metastatic colon cancer, good treatment can allow patients to live meaningful lives for years, rather than weeks and months. This may seem like small comfort to someone facing a diagnosis of metastatic colon cancer, but it points toward the day when metastatic colon cancer may become a chronic, manageable condition, rather than a life-shortening disease.
If you've been diagnosed with metastatic colon cancer, be sure you talk to your doctor about all of the treatment options you should consider. New research breakthroughs are being made daily and you may even want to find out if a clinical trial is right for you. Be sure to discuss the pros and cons of clinical trials with your health care team.
I agree that metastic colon cancer can be a chronic disease in some cases. I am living proof.
I was intially diagnosed in 2004 with colon cancer. In the spring of 2007 it metastisized to lymph nodes in the center of my body.
I’ve been on various forms of chemo and targeted drugs ever since. It will be 3 years in the spring of 2010. Chemo treatments suck but the alternative is worse … so far.
Rebecca,
My regards to you and your family.
My Dad has been diagnosed with stage four colon cancer and the Dr. has recommended that my dad think about quality vs quantity. So at this time he said he could go on a paliative chemo pill but has made my dad think that it will make him feel rotten. So at this time his tumour marker numbers keep raising but he feels fine. Because he is feeling ok he is not considering chemo as he is afraid to get sick (he has watched my mom go through 2 different chemo treatments which she was very ill but healthy now). If it is not too difficult could you share the symptoms and any of your experiences to help me understand what might come.
Re: Kim, metastatic colon cancer
I don’t pretend to be an expert, and treatment so often varies between people & depending on their Doctor etc, but some symptoms my mother experienced after being on chemo drip and tablets were v. strong tingling in the hands, headache and lots of nausea. She was on steroids for a while but that seemed to make her worse, gave her terrible nightmares and made her think she was losing her mind. She was better off without them. Later she got perinatal disease, ascites, swollen legs and abdomen and skin infection there too. She was given antibiotics but evidently it only cleaned up the skin infection and she got worse & weaker over the next few weeks. I found a brief journal she kept and can’t imagine what it must have been like for her every day: vomiting up most of what she ate each day along with diarrhea, v swollen abdomen, treating only 4 hours sleep (max) as a rare amazing achievement. But she was so fiercely independent that she held off telling her own GP, her friends and even me, how ill she felt.
Only ~3 months ago she was expecting to go on more aggressive chemo that would cause hair loss this time, but she stopped talking about that, the date for it came and went and she said no I’d been mistaken about that date. I knew she was lying but I didn’t want to upset her by pushing it. Something tells me that she’d either turned it down or, considering her sudden low demeanor in her last couple weeks, she was giving up. She kept a LOT to herself. That frustrates me now. (But some parents are really tough buggers like that!)
She checked into Marie Curie Hospice for a “2-day trial” – so she said to me on the phone – sounding perky, coherent and ok that day. Less than 30 hours later she was dead. She warned me that sometimes it happens suddenly, sometimes gradually, etc. Everyone’s different, but in her case she had primary renal failure and was vomiting ‘coffee grounds’ which I witnessed first hand. The doc (who wasn’t there at the time) said that “nurses panic too much at that and say (coffee grounds) it’s blood, when it isn’t really”…Like hell it isn’t, considering I not only saw it with my own eyes but also read up on it: it’s caused by only a “small bleed” in the abdomen with ab fluids, but still a bleed.
Please don’t anybody treat this as a prediction/forecast for what’ll happen to themselves or their own relatives, it’s just a response to a request for sharing info from Kim.