here is a cut and paste of an email my wife been emailing out to friend, cancer update on me.
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After visiting with the doctor today who seems to be very knowledgeable on this type of cancer, I am sending an update on what we wil be doing next for Rusty.
First off, he wants to do an ultrasound of the other testicle to assure that it is not cancerous as well, although the doctor highly doubts it.
Secondly we will do another bronchoscopy and do biopsies of what is inside the lung still, that is looking bad on the CT scans. He is almost 100% sure that this is still the cancer that it was a few months ago before we started chemo.
At this point, with the chemotherapy that Rusty has already undergone just proves that it is late relapse of the testicular cancer.
Apparently there is early relapse (in the first 2 years after initial testicular cancer) and late relapse (after the first 2 years) Early relapse is generally easier to cure and can be done with heavy doses of chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant.
It is apparent that Rusty has late relapse cancer which is not really curable with chemotherapy. The only option that this doctor has really will be to either remove the whole lung (IF the lung surgeon thinks it can be done and thinks he can remove ALL of the cancer inside the lung) or if that is not possible, will be simply to keep the cancer as small as we can with short doses of chemo the next few years which will only buy him a few more years at life.
The bottom line is this is not good news at all. Removing the lung or most of the lung will give him possibly 5-10 more years it sounds like (maybe more-they can't put a number on it) but this doctor also said he will probably need abdominal surgery to remove the lump leftover from the last surgery that was left in and has grown in size somewhat here recently. IF we are not able to remove this lung or most of the lung then we will simply just do short rounds of chemo to try to keep the cancer from spreading much further for as long as we can, until it is not possible any longer.
This doctor trained at one of tthe top research facilities for testicular cancer in the country that actually had come up with the cure for testicular cancer and has seen the most cases of testicular cancer and relapses. HE has seen more cases of the relapses and knows Rusty's odds are not good at all right now. For him to relapse at this far out is not good.
It is a slower growing cancer, and is harder to kill, next to impossible. Chemo and bone marrow transplants will really not kill it at all.
The Doctors name at U of I is Dr Vaena thru the Cancer Center there. He wants to make sure he has all the other options considered before we do make further plans. But I dont think we will be doing any more chemotherapy at this point.