I haven't posted for a while because there hasn't been much to report. For nearly two years, Merlynn's liver tumors remained “stable”. Slowly, over the past few months however, the marker numbers on his blood tests started to trend upwards, and when he received his latest MRI, we discovered as we'd expected that most of his tumors have started to grow again. Some of them have grown significantly.
Merlynn decided it was time to act.
During our Utah Carcinoid Cancer Support Group meeting last May, we heard from an interventional radiologist named Dr. James Carlisle. He told us about a procedure called radioembolization which involves placing millions of microscopic radioactive resin beads, called SIR-Spheres which are bonded with Yttrium-90, into the liver through the hepatic artery. If done correctly, the beads settle in next to and deep within the liver tumors. The radiation kills or shrinks those tumors without harming the good parts of the liver. The beads lose most of their radiation after about 3 days but remain permanently in place in the liver.
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| Mer with Dr. James Carlisle at our support group meeting in May |
After a few weeks of preparation, where Dr. Carlisle "mapped" Merlynn's liver so he knew where each of his arteries went, Mer had the procedure done on his right liver lobe yesterday. This is an outpatient procedure; but as expected, he is pretty hammered today and will be for the next couple of weeks. We feel everything went well though and will wait to see how the scans and marker labs look in a month. If the procedure was successful, he will have the left lobe of his liver done in about two months.
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| Merlynn right before the procedure |
Because of Merlynn's occupation in environmental health, he was able to borrow a Geiger Counter from his former employer. Here is a little video we filmed when we got home last night. No wonder we were advised not to get within 3 feet of each other for the next 3-4 days!
If you are a carcinoid cancer patient or know someone who is, you may be interested in learning more about the radioembolization procedure. Here are some good articles:
For general information:
