Dad has secondary brain cancer

[LFlynn91]

My beautiful dad of only 58 has been diagnosed exactly a year to the day since his original diagnosis with secondary brain cancer.
His original cancer was the oesophagus and he fought so hard through brutal chemo and surgery. He has only been cancer free for 3 months.
Suddenly over the last couple of weeks he has had problems with his right hand, reading, typing and a bit slow with speech. He took himself to hospital where a CT showed multiple masses.
The doctors had the MDT yesterday and we are waiting for an MRI.
There isn’t one single piece of positive news on the internet.
Has anyone experienced this?

Hello, I’m sorry to hear your news. A lovely relative had oesophageal cancer in his 50s, but wasn’t approved for surgery. He got some extra years through joining clinical trials at The Marsden.

My loveiy sister 53 had secondary brain cancer so I feel for you , hers came about a year after her original breast cancer and she lived with it for another two years
steroids helped with some of the symptoms and she did also have whole brain radiotherapy but I honestly can’t say if that helped
I think it’s hard for some drugs to cross the blood brain barrier and her oncologist tried different chemos
Being very honest it’s a tough diagnosis
we did have some good times together in that last couple of years ,the one blessing I feel is that due to her forgetfulness she didn’t always realise how bad it was
Big hugs to you

Thank you for your honest and helpful reply. I’m so sorry to hear about your sister.
How quickly did her symptoms escalate from diagnosis, did she have bad side effects from the treatment? Xx

Really useful to know about the trials, thank you. Marsden are amazing. Sorry you experienced this with your relative.

I would say the initial six months after the spread ti the brain were ok but it just gradually got worse and yes there were some horrible side effects to deal with and then as time went on she became more bed ridden and couldn’t walk and ended up using a wheelchair
we also tried private and went to see a doctor in Harley st , he tried another treatment it maybe gave a few extra months , it was very hard but we did have amazing support as a family from the Macmillan nurses and she managed to stay at home
right to the end

Hi @aussiegonewrong
thank you so much.
did your sister ever say she regretted the treatment because of the side effects?
my dad is a mixture of nhs and private so maybe like you say there might be more treatment options.
I just already can’t believe how quickly dad’s symptoms have come on and I feel like the dexamethasone isn’t helping much.
i think what I find the most heartbreaking is seeing how frightened my dad is
xx

No I think my sister was willing to try anything to get more time but the brain radiation made her forgetful
she was getting very despondent when her nhs ran out of options so seeing the private doctor really did give her some hope which as a family we were very grateful for
it will be scary for your Dad but you sound very supportive and I am sure he will feel that
it’s hard on everyone but we just tried to spend as much time with her as possible and to do nice things when she was well enough and take each day as it comes