wiesia

I also have never been bothered with people asking this question. I am assuming they are just looking for information/cause. We do know that smoking causes great many LC's (not to mention other diseases). All I need to do is too look at my family. My father's mother lived to be 97, her mother as well. My father always thought that he had great genes and that he will see 100. He is gone and so are his two brothers -- all died around 70, all smoked, all from very aggressive LC. Their two sisters are very healthy, both more than 80 years old now. Smoking has robbed my father and me of great many years of life. I know that my father regretted ever smoking. He stopped some 15 years ago but that did not help. But most people get pulled into smoking in their teens - when one hardly thinks. I also think that my father would not have touched a cigarette had he known how many years of life this would cost him. We really need to focus on educating young people about the dangers of smoking. And if people ask us about smoking and LC maybe it is one way to spread the word in a real way about what might happen if you do smoke.

Yes, for most treatments it does not matter what type of NSCLC you father has. It is only recently that we have learnt that Tarceva (for example) works differently on adeno than on squamus. If I were in your shoes I would not worry about it now and if you ever need to know it for further treatments you can always ask them to check it (they should have enough tissues).

Ned, The Army x-rays were done in days where doctors were still looking for active TB. In Poland, when you worked you needed a "work card" and to get one you had to get a chest x-ray. After the war TB was rampant and it took some time to wipe it out. But with the new resistant strends it is still a worry. My father had yearly x-rays all his life till he stopped working at 65. Wild horses would not drag gim to a doctor after that. We often wonder what would have happened had he still had those x-rays... In Poland, you just walk into any clinic and ask for a chest x-ray if you want to. They will give it to you for free and you do not even need to see a doctor. Couple of days later you will get the report. The gv has figured that between a possibility of a resitant TB appearing somewhere and lung cancer it is better to screen the population.

tierdmom, your observation could be correct. It is one of the theories bounced around (at least in breast cancer). The idea is that the primary controls the mets to a degree while it is there. Once removed the "control" signals are gone and the mets grow wildly. In breast cancer this is a big issue since most women do have a surgery and who knows whether the tests picked up correctly that there is no mets.

I looked into it for my father and also for my mother (who has metastatic breast cancer). I think the logic for lung cancer is like that: lung surgery is very hard, lung cancer is an aggressive cancer and the first priority is to treat the spread. Surgery would need some recovery time and you would not be able to get chemo for a month or more. In that time the mets can run away from you. Keeping that in mind, I thought (when my father was still alive) that if we could control the mets (he never had problems with the two spots on his bones), and could shrink one of the tumors in lungs (he had two) then we could cyberknife the other one. Bad luck for us: his lung tumors (one of them) run away from us. But, in principle, this is something to look into, I think.

My mother had taxotere for breast cancer. It wiped her out. I think it was every three weeks. But it really worked for her: she had 15 out of 17 lymph nodes positive and her cancer did come back but only after five years. Five very good years.

Bone mets: my mother has breast cancer that has progressed to bones after 5 years. She had radiation and is on Aredia and Femara. Recent scans showed that the two 'ole" spots were healed but there was something new on one vertebrae. The doctors looked at that bone carefully and decided that it is cancer probably but it seems like it is calcifying already so they decided to keep her on the current treatment and check in three months. My guess would be that the doctors could be really split on what to do if there is just some minor progression.

Hello ! It is tough to fight lung cancer when it spread to the bones. But each cancer is different and there are people here on the board that lived many years with it. Lucy lived 4 years of decent quality life. My father had it in the bones as well and it turned out that that was not a problem. The tumor in his lymph nodes and lung was. Just focus on getting your husband strong (I did, I think, suggest IV feeding as a possibility before; it really helped my father) and taxotere may really stop the cancer for quite a while.

If he is so skinny... It is not a permanent solution but it might build up his strengh: did you try IV's with glucose, lipits etc ? You can get some 3000K each day that way and it could help him fight the pain.

My father was 1 at dx. Very healthy all his life, no health problems at all. They told him that he should have easy time with chemo. It turned out to be terrible. Maybe because he never took any drugs, the chemo drugs were very hard on him and he started to deteriorate really fast after the third cycle of chemo. There was one week when he lost 7kg.

This is what I have never understood about my family. My father was a heavy smoker but one day he had a hernia operation, the doctor told us that he did not like the sound of his lungs and he will try to convince him to quit. I think he scared him about, maybe, needing another operation. Anyway, my father stopped it just then and there. Never smoked again. And if asked he would say that stopping it was a piece of cake. I can not understand why it was so easy for him. His older brother was an alcoholic. But when the lent came he would put away alcohol for a month without even blinking. Strange, no ?

Looking back my father said that for about a year before he was diagnosed strange things were happening. he had a bad luck in that his primary tumor was in a lower lobe so caused no cough or wheezing until it spread to the mediastinum and the other lung (central part). Then he had a cold and a cough that would not go away for a month so he went to see a doctor. But later he remembered that about a year before he had a similar episode with cold and cough. Cough lasted a month or so and then went away on its own. Had it lasted any longer he would have gone to a doctor. Oh well ! the other problems he remembered were sweating a lot, even doing light labor. He also lost some weight (noticably) without trying to but, silly us, we were happy because he was really getting overweight. Had we gone to a doctor with that first caughing episode perhaps he would still be around. But, honestly, it seemed like a annoying cold that he caught on his fishing expedition to the North Pole

My father smoked for 40 years; stopped 15 years ago. It did not help. He is the fourth person on his side of our extended family to get lung cancer. All in the 70's. All smokers. The siblings who did not smoke live to be around 90 or 100. We clearly have lungs genetically predisposed to cancer when hit by smoke.

Some remarks, My father was also performance status 3 at some point and the doctor was afraid to give him chemo. So he just gave him Avastin (no side effects from that one at all, so you should seriously look into it; it worked on the primary tumor of my father) and waited a week. After a week my father's condition being stable, he got Navelbine. No side effects from that one either. Btw, you can check on the web about the grading for performance status; it will give you an idea whether your father is indeed 3 or not. RFA, cyberknife etc are not generally used in stage IV. The reasoning is that with an agressive cancer like lung cancer it is most important to treat the disease systemically. Again, I would look more carefully into adding Avastin.

There are scales that doctors/researchers use to determine whether patient is able to take chemo. Performance status scales. There are two of them that are in use. One is called Karnofsky scale and you can find plenty on it on the web. You will find a discussion of how to decide what number your father is and how risky it might be to give him chemo. I do not remember the name of the other scale at the moment but it should be easy to find it on the web as well.

When my father was found to have NSCLC he also had a terrible paing in his hips (could not walk) and a reall bad paing in one elbow. Naturally we assumed it was from cancer that has spread so he was sent for a bone scan. It has turned out that the pain had nothing to do with cancer (he did have two spots of cancer: on the spine and one clavicle that were usymptomatic). The pain in hips went away by itself and the pain in elbow was from a nurve that had to be blocked.

I will be hoping for the best for you father !

there are mixtures of codaine and other things that work for cough; they really worked well for my father

I am so sorry to hear that. My sincere condolences.

Cisplatin/gemzar is the standard first line treatment in Europe. In US, it is Carbo/Taxol. Cisplatin and Carbo are very similar: carbo is easier on your body (like kidney) but has worse effect on your blood counts. There is some evidence that Cisplatin is better than carbo but this is mostly in lower stages of lung cancer not so much in stage IV. I did ask doctors why they chose C/G in europe and CT in US and the response I got was that CG is slightly better but the infusion time plus a hospital stay (in Europe you stay a night at the hospital after infusion of Cisplatin) was financially too much for US insurance companies. My father had C/G. He had no problem with his blood at all but had vomiting.

Teri, Unfortunately if the tumor is compressing the main bronchus, oxygen will really not help. But there might be other problems with the lungs adding to SOB and for those oxygen could help. Have you tried to get oxygen compressor ? My father was using one and it helped him. You should not need a prescription for those and they can even be borrowed. My father's doctor did not recommend oxygen either but we feel that it helped my father. Did the doctor discuss putting a stent into the bronchus ? That is another thing to keep in mind. Is it really compression or is there infiltration of the airways as well ?

I have lost a lot of weight several times in my life (once from severe dehydration after I moved to Utah and forgot to drink water). And yes, I do feel cold when I loose weight. It is very unpleasant.

Can the obstracting tumor be removed (at least partially) by a laser ? You can do that if the tumor is inside the airway. If it is outside you may ask whether a stent in the bronchus is a possibility. It is true that radiation does not always work.

Red grape juice is often used by women on the breast cancer board for elevating platelets count. Worth a trial !

I think the lower bound is around 150.