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When will I know the treatment was successful?
When will I know the treatment was successful. At that time I could not swallow whole food. I was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in my lower esophagus in September 2022 and had feeding tube inserted. I was not a candidate for surgery. I had 3 chemo treatments and the turmor shrunk 40%. Then I had 28 days of chemo and radiation. CT scan 6 weeks after end of treatment, showed nothing new and nothing grew. The feeding tube was removed and I am now able to eat everything and side affects are gone. I am now scheduled for endoscopy and PET scan in 2 weeks.
Could this be the end?
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Is there ever an end of treatment with esophageal adenocarcinoma? I was told treatment would continue “indefinitely” since there isn’t a cure.
I assume treatment may be different and less frequent?
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1 ReactionHi I am in the same boat. I was under the assumption mine was cured. Until I received my last cat scan referral and it states “residual esophagael adenocarcinoma
I have similar questions. I'm not sure what the answer is though. Repeat testing and close follow up as well as reporting of any symptoms seem most important. My husband was NED for nearly 4 years, doing well until a routine endoscopy showed recurrence. He has squamous cell type in the distal esophagus, a site more common for adenocarcinoma. He had a negative CT scan and PET this time, so if not for the endoscopy, we may not have known until symptoms developed again. I too am wondering how they will figure that out with those repeat tests after he completes treatment, since they were both negative. I would imagine repeat endoscopy...have you seen your oncologist yet about the CT scan results @merryp? Wishing you the best
In general, it takes ALL of these things to be "cured"... or maybe let's start with NED... and then if you're NED for 5 years straight... only then will we start talking cured. I'm almost 4 years post-op now, still NED, but I sure don't think of myself as cured.
The problem is, it's cancer. And our ability to see it inside our bodies is elusive... because it just isn't big enough. Scans are nice, but our cancers need to be much more than 5mm to show up... that's at least the size of a pea, or an eraser on a pencil. But blood monitoring also helps... along with endoscopies... and of course keeling an eye on our symptoms.
But if possible and if eligible, we do EVERYTHING ! We take no shortcuts. Chemo, radiation, esophagectomy, immunotherapy. Throw everything and the kitchen sink at your cancer... you can't wish this beast away. But for all of us... time will tell. Be well.
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3 ReactionsDid he have surgery?
No, he wasn't a surgical candidate
@merryp, what are your next steps? Will you have further testing?
Nothing has changed here. We're all in the same boat... of not knowing our futures. We all just have varying degrees of knowing... of the stage of our cancers... of our symptoms... of what our current diagnostic tests show.
Now what is done for each of us varies greatly depending where we are at currently. And how our oncologists view us (and make decisions about treatments, staying the course, or changing things up, mixing in immunotherapies)... is a bit different than how we see things.
No cancer progression is considered a win... and maybe no changes will be made. Of course we simply want it 100% eradicated... no where to be found. But that rarely happens. I've been NED for over 4 years... I don't think of myself as cured... I'm just trending in the right direction for now.
Next steps depend on where you currently are and which way things are heading. And I've seen a hundred different cases with my fellow EC patients. Many factors involved. Many.