My husbands tumor on the back of his knee has been causing him so much pain that the nurse thought it would be a god idea to pause his chemo to get him a CT scan to find out if it was working the latest one is gemzar , we found out this morning that it is not working, he doesnt have any new tumors but one of the tumors on his lung has gotten slighty bigger so they have decided to give him radiation on the tumor at the back of his knee to try to reduce the size of it and he has to go back in 4 weeks to discuss further chemo i dont like the 4 week wait but then i suppose that been on a chemo that doesnt work is like been on no chemo at all ( his pallative care nurse agrees with me on this) he is on morphine based tablets at the moment so he is able to get out of bed so that is good.. i wish someone would find a cure for this disease :(
Would ILP (Isolated Limb Perfusion) be an option for the knee? I know somebody who had this in France. I don't know if it is available in Ireland. Here is a article about the procedure:
thanks for that info i will ask the doctor about it but Ireland is so far behind in medicine its not even funny, he started radiation on the knee today so hopefully that will shrink the size of the tumor, surgery is not an opyion at the moment because no chemo is working and they wont operate till the cancer is being controlled plus the fact that the surgeon has already explained that it may take an amputation of the leg to get rid of the tumor on the knee :(
Indeed, surgery is usually not done on the limb when there are mets in the lungs. Being in Ireland, do you have access to European trials? The situation sounds helpless :-( They may not be able to cure him at this point but they should try to make him as comfortable as possible. May be amputation should still be considered if the pain is so bad...