Dad has cancer...

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So, my dad had cancer of the Kidney 12 years ago.. operated on, recovered, all fine...Yearly full body scans to check for it's return, all been clear up until 2 weeks ago, detected it in his pancreas..I know for a fact pancreatic cancer has a VERY bleak outcome (2% chance of surviving 5 years) as my dad's best friend had it and died from it within 2 years...The only "positive" side to this is it is not directly pancreatic cancer, it is a secondary of his Kidney cancer, which was not a hugely aggressive tumour..Currently it is 2mm in size, and has grown 1mm in 1 year so far..(they had an eye on it, or something like that)He's being treated privately at the Royal Marsdon in London, which to my knowledge is one of the best places to be.. but even they have apparently said it can't be operated on even though it's very small, because it's inside or something.So what i'm asking is, has anyone here had any previous experience with this condition, whether it be you, family member, friend, someone you knew.. etc etc..I am not asking about pancreatic cancer, please only post if you know about secondary cancer within the pancreas..Thanks

My dad had kidney cancer last year. He had the surgery and everything, but he's now currently in some sort of experimental treatment. We were told that there is a possibility of it returning because kidney cancer commonly returns within the nest 4-5 years or something like that. Unfortunately all I've really heard is that when it returns it can be nasty...i don't remember any definite statistics off the top of my head but I remember that the mortality rate if it returns is pretty bad. I hope that your dad's cancer was caught early. I'm very sorry to hear about all this. I wish it was happier information, Hopefully i'm wrong though.

Well the thing is, it already has returned once, and that ended up growing on his thigh, which was no problem at all... but obviously where it is now is not so good...I guess in the end it will always get you one way or another!

Yeah unfortunately kidney cancer is a nasty thing to have. As of right now the experimental treatment my dad is in involves 4 different drugs that were designed specifically because kidney cancer has such a high rate of returning. So treatments are in the process of being developed. One of the unfortunate things about these drugs though is the side effects are horrible my dad has a 3-4 page list of side effects that include things like failure of the other kidney, cranial bleeding, and heart problems. Luckily the only thing my dad has experienced from that is nausea, headaches, and a bout of high blood pressure, but once such symptoms occur you are atleast temporarily taken off the program. Currently my dads cancer has not returned.Hopefully the doctor caught your father's early on. It seems like a bit of a good sign that they have been monitoring it for some time now, and therefore have been contemplating how they plan to go about treatment.

Has your father had chemotherapy before? Did he have it after the original operation? After the thigh one?

Nope was just operated on, cut out and that was the end of it... apparently he can't have chemo on this one on the pancreas though, only pills that can be given to "slow" the growth...Why do you ask?

I wonder why he can't have chemo? Either it means he has other conditions that would make it too dangerous, or this is such a slow-growing cancer that anti-cancer drugs (which usually target rapidly-dividing cells) would be ineffective. It does seem to be a slow one.The viciousness of cancer is that often cancer cells break away from the original tumour, go through the bloodstream, and settle somewhere else, where they keep dividing to form a secondary tumour. This process is call metastasis, and when it occurs the cancer is called malignant. It is usually a secondary tumour that kills you.The problem is that secondary tumours are practically invisible until they have about a billion cells. Therefore, if a tumour is malignant and has had time to metastasise, there could be thousands of unknown undetectable secondary tumours in the body. Therefore, surgery is usually followed by chemotherapy to deal with these - anticancer drugs are most effective on these very small tumours.

However, cancer cells develop resistance to anti-cancer drugs, and generally after two different periods of chemotherapy (each of which typically uses three or four anti-cancer drugs), there's not much more that can be done. This was why I asked about chemotherapy in the past.

This does seem to be a slow cancer. It's likely there are other secondary tumours, too small to be detected, present, and so it's probably only a matter of time. The good news with a slow cancer is that the slowness draws out that time. Pancreatic cancer is probably not a bad one because it is in the pancreas, but because it metastasises quickly and the secondary tumours grow quickly. This one is a different tissue.

Yeah, he also has one other "secondary" on his lung too...Apparently chemo is not an option because it's inside the pancreas as opposed to growing on the outside of it, I think that's what was said, unless I heard it wrong.Yeah it went into metastasis, he was told after his initial operation, a MINUTE part of the tumour escaped into a near by vein... I guess that's why this has happened now?Either way... bleh! I guess we'll just have to hope time is on our side, and as it's a secondary it's not going to be as aggressive as first hand pancreatic cancer..I'm still waiting for a post from someone who ideally knows someone who had kidney cancer then a secondary in the pancreas, but I guess the chances of that are rather slim.

Hello JCC,

I'm new on this forum. The one and only reason for me to join these boards is to try and help others with my experience. For years I've intensively investigated huge amounts of medical information to support my dear father, who has cancer. Although my father originaly was cured from stomach cancer with metastasis in the lymph nodes, the cancer is frequently recurring. I must add that God has given us the strength to keep fighting this battle and I thank Him every day for helping my father.

I read your post and decided to share some information with you that might be helpfull. I know exactely how you feel: it's devestating...

Although your father's specific medical situation doesn't allow for toxic chemo-treatments, the latest devolpments in cancer treatments has provided some very promising alternatives, which might be an option. Science has come a long way in recent years!

These "monoclonal antibodies" and "angiogenesis inhibitors" aren't quite as toxic as chemo. Although there already are multiple approved "MaB's" on the market, there are also lots of promising clinical trials in progress (without them unethical placebo or randomized architectures) in which patiënts can enter. One example is "pazopanib": very promising, against a very wide range of cancers, succes rates up to 82%!!!

You can Google "monoclonal antibodies kidney cancer" or "angiogenesis inhibitors kidney cancer". For a comprehensive list of clinical trials you can check out: http://clinicaltrials.gov/

My friend: stay positive! Those statistics are based on the last 10 years or so: decades of scientific research are just now producing revolutionary new medicine, which can help your father! If I can help you with anything: let me know!