Life Expectancy - 1257398

“Every cancer therapy has two purposes: to improve duration of life, and to improve quality of life. Every other measure of chemotherapy success, such as response rate or progression-free-survival, is a surrogate to these two true goals. I am using the broken record as my pseudo-apology for repeating this mantra repeatedly on GRACE, to my colleagues, and in my mind every time I make a treatment decision.
Chemotherapy is the most important treatment for achieving these two goals in stage IV disease. Stage IVmeans that the cancer has spread and is no longer curable. Incurable is not the same as untreatable. Cure means eliminating every last cancer cell. Treatment means providing real benefit, in the form of achieving these two goals.”

The previous is an introduction to the post pasted below.

http://cancergrace.org/lung/2010/04/16/introduction-to-first-line-thera…

Your husband is so young and I’m so sorry you and he are dealing with this. There is no way to say what your husband’s prognosis will be, it depends on many factors including how aggressive or indolent the cancer is, how well it responds to treatment, how well he tolerates treatment, and how well he responds to palliative care (care that enhances wellbeing). Some people are traveling the world 4 and 5 years out from diagnosis but unfortunately some people won't live past first line treatment. In too many ways this disease lives up to its evil reputation.

Since your husband has the EGFR mutation it is very possible he will do very well for a year or very often more on the pill tarceva. After that there are still many choices.

continued on next post...

I want to leave you with some discussions from our library of expert commentary (I don’t know if you’ve seen that side of Grace’s fab info). I think these touch on some of your initial concerns, all of which are quite normal.

Note that there are follow up links at the end of each discussion.

http://cancergrace.org/cancer-101/2011/01/01/cancer-101-faq-i-have-meta…

http://cancergrace.org/cancer-101/2012/03/17/the-principle-of-letting-t…

http://cancergrace.org/lung/2013/01/23/acquired-resistance-algorithm/

http://cancergrace.org/cancer-101/2009/05/07/discussing-px/

Welcome to Grace sriant, I'm glad you've found us and I hope we will be able to move through this together for a long long time, years.

All best,
Janine
Forum moderator

sriant,

I'm sorry I don't have any recommendations on coping with this unfortunate development. I do want to say that survival in the range of several years is a common pattern for someone with an activating EGFR mutation. Results vary greatly, and we always hope that we'll have new therapies become available over time.

-Dr. West

sriant, I'm sorry to not have responded sooner, I did reply a couple of days ago but erased by mistake and didn't have time to redo it. Now that I've found my clipboard I think I won't toss it out the window, today. ;)

anyway,
This coping deal is difficult by any measure and quite a life changer really. Don't feel you're alone and you're welcome here to discuss issues of dealing with day to day. There are other forums that are geared more toward discussions in that vain but we do our share of venting too. For example when I mentioned how I found screaming while driving in the car to be helpful, several others stated they'd done the same.

Here's a link to a list of links on the subject of coping with cancer, http://cancergrace.org/coping-with-cancer/

As far as using these forums as a coping outlet or personal timeline you are welcome to create your own thread in the member updates forum, http://cancergrace.org/forum/member-updates/lung-cancer-member-updates
When you have a question that needs a doctor's input create a new thread in the new questions forum. That way doctors won't need to wade through the timeline, as well others looking for the same answers can find them more easily.

Mostly don't worry about getting the forum etiquette alright just let us steer you in the right direction if the threads start to get muddy.

I can't imagine how difficult it must be to not speak the language. I knew a doctor from Mexico who lived in the US for a couple of years to do research. I was surprised to find that he could read english because he could only speak it enough to buy cigarettes and beer. Once he got the hang of speaking english he told us that he read all his medical books and journals in english but had never spoken it, hence the problem. If this is true for your husband's doctors perhaps you can communicate in writing.

All the very best,
Janine

This is a great place for help from the medical side to the "peace of mind" side. Don't hesitate to ask questions or just blow off steam.