Esophageal cancer treatment: Anyone have good experiences to share?

On my third round and fourth next Wednesday. They have all been rough for about 9 of the 14 day and then starts all over. Stage 3 esophageal cancer and on FLOT. Say surgery after the fourth round and then 4 more rounds after surgery. Scared to death as I’m not sure what to expect? Anyone have advise or experience they will or could share.?

Keytruda was a game changer for us!! Medical advancements are constant. God bless the researchers!!

We are three weeks post op and your message helps. Getting through the long days and lots of sitting for us, who are super active, is rough. But we're keeping our eyes on the prize (cheeseburgers and romantic nights! 🙂 ). We are stronger than we know. And no question, this sucks! Wishing you and all the very best.

Yes .

@mrmac1234
There is always hope so hang in there. There may be new treatments come along at any time, and we all pray for devine help as well. Do you have family and friends for support as well as medical team?
Don

Wow god bless . I have stage4 spread to liver and lymph nodes. Is there any hope for me medically they will not do any radiation or dilation or radiation. So they say to me, just making me comfortable. Chemo keytruda and herceptin .

I will not do any surgery on me because it's in my liver. My lympnotes above my stomach and just below the lopes. On my lungs, besides a six centimeter tumor broke through the esophagus wall.To cause the spread . Not thinking there is any hope . As far as they sloan say to advanced .

Ty how do I get to more stage 4 esophagus several people .

I'm 7 weeks post op from my Esophagectomy. First, everyone's experience is different and unique to them personally. I really believe that if you focus on long term outcomes, you're in better shape to handle the treatment plan. I had Folfox chemotherapy and a combination of photon and proton beam radiation at the same time. My tumor went from 6 centimeters to almost complete reduction. The esophagectomy was also successful in redacting all of the cancer in the esophagus and nothing was found in surrounding lymph nodes. My recovery from surgery was difficult. Again, everyone is different. For me the most important thing was to recognize each day seems long, but you do get better. I'm 7 weeks post surgery and started back working out every day and am getting close to feeling normal again. I look back at my recovery and recall the difficulty, but it doesn't seem as bad now that it's history. You have a challenge ahead of you, but you have a rewarding goal of getting past this chapter on a road to good health. Best of luck to you. Try to stay positive. Its your best tool in your recovery.

Good experiences... are you joking?! All we go thru to hopefully be rid of our EC just ain't much fun! Compared to many, I went thru very little... only 5 chemo (Carboplatin and Taxol) and 23 radiation... then esophagectomy and then one year of Opdivo immunotherapy. Post-op I had a tight anastomosis (that some of us patients get as our scar tissue needs a little stretching... I was stuck at 5mm). I started a series of 4 stretches at 6 months post-op... one per month... and then I was eating well again and put on weight very quickly!

I'm almost to 5 years now... so that's the enjoyable part I suppose. But for all of us, the EC journey is fraught with some mental and physical misery along the way. Toss in a heaping helping of uncertainty and depression... yep, that pretty much describes it. So now that I'm pretty much back to normal these days (even sleeping flat and normal... i sure didn't see that ever coming!), I spend most of my time helping others now. The only thing that makes sense to me to do... brings me some satisfaction with all I went thru. I've learned so much talking to hundreds of other EC patients and caregivers. We now have twice-weekly EC Zoom calls. What a crazy ride I'm on now! Be well.

Gary