From the first moment my wife discovered
she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even
ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have
received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than
mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started
this blog…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for
answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The
following entry appeared in July of 2012.
A few weeks ago
(June 2012), my brother-in-law was diagnosed with liver cancer.
I’d talked about
metastatic breast cancer of the liver (http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2011/12/metastatic-breast-cancer-liver-cancer.html),
but with this grim diagnosis, I wanted to look more closely at the differences
– if any.
In brief,
metastatic breast cancer in the liver (MBC:L) comes from the transfer of breast
cells to the liver and then the growth of tumors there. Most often treated with
hormone, chemo and radiation therapies, there are newer choices as well,
including liver resection.
Regarding non-MBC
liver cancer (and my brother-in-law has the complication of being a hemophiliac
(this refers to a group of bleeding disorders in which it takes a long time for
the blood to clot)) it has been “...shown that cancer is…common…for people
with hemophilia. The authors attributed this to overlooked symptoms, such as
blood in the urine or stool, and delayed treatment because of bleeding
complications…The most common cancer in patients with hemophilia and hepatitis C virus is hepatocellular
carcinoma, a type of liver cancer.”
Hepatocellular carcinoma, also called HCC, develops like any other cancer
by a mutation to the cellular machinery that makes the cell divide faster than
normal and/or gives the cell a sort of “immortality” by keeping itself from ever
dying. This wild growth of cells form tumors and the tumors ruin the normal
balance of chemistry in the liver. This leads to many different symptoms:
abdominal pain, jaundice, bloating, loss of appetite, nausea and proteins in
the blood that aren’t supposed to be there.
There are many
treatments available for both MBC:L and HCC and while there is a constant
search for new methodology, in the long run, whether the cancer originated in
metastatic breast cells or in the liver itself, the prognosis continues to
depend on how much the cancer has spread and how quickly it is treated. The
main difference is that MBC:L cells can also be treated with tamoxifen (which
affects estrogen levels) the same as any other breast cancer cells. HCC is not
treated that way.
Resources: http://www.hemaware.org/story/getting-older-hemophilia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepatocellular_carcinoma
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