Husband with Brain Metastasis from Esophageal Cancer

tammy1124 · New User Joined: 09 Mar 2009 Posts: 1

Hello to everyone. I'm new to the forum and looking for any opions or advice.
My husband (42) was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in March of 2008. They said it was stage II. He under went chemo and radiation therapy then surgery. After surgery we were told that all the cancer was removed sucessfully but they wanted to do 3 more rounds of chemo as a precaution.
They removed the part of the esophagus and the upper portion of his stomach.
After the last 3 rounds of chemo they did a PET CT scan and said he was free of cancer. That was in October of 2008. Our lives were slowly being returned to us.
In January he went back for a check and they did a another CT scan. Again we were told there was no evidence of cancer.
On February 19th he was rushed to the hospital after suffering a siezure. He has never had any type of siezure before. They did a CT scan and found 2 tumors in his brain. 1 of which was 5cm and the second was 3cm.
They did surgery on both within a week and are now saying he will need radiation treatments to the brain.

I can't help but wonder why they didn't catch it sooner. I don't know whether to pursue any action against the Doctors or not. Any advice or comments are welcome.
_________________
Never Give Up!

brainman

Tammy, I am very sorry about you husband's advanced cancer. It is hard to understand why the did not catch the brain mets... especially during the January scan. It does not seem to me that less than a month is enough time for brain mets to grow. If you are really concerned, have your husband get a second opinion with the second doctor taking a look and all of the scans to see if in the past there really was no sign of tumors.

Nevertheless, even if they had found something back then, I think the process would be the same. In fact, they might have opted for a "wait-and-see" approach... the tumors might have been too small for surgery.

You and your husband are in my thoughts and prayers.
_________________
Jim
Administrator and long-term cancer survivor
1992 Astrocytoma grade 2, left motor strip
2005 Recurrence this time said to be an Oligodendroglioma grade 3, same location.
http://cancerforums.net/viewtopic.php?t=2405
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