24Apr 2024 by Ronny Allan 8 Comments
‘Chinese Dumplings’ and Neuroendocrine Cancer

‘Chinese Dumplings’ and Neuroendocrine Cancer

Treatment
Update of one of my posts from 2015 which was interesting in that year.  This is not really about a treatment which is available everywhere but was a novel approach by one of the world's most gifted and innovative NET surgeons. Please note this is not a nutrition post! One of my daily alerts brought up this very interesting article published in the Journal of Gastrointestinal Oncology in June 2015.  I personally found it fascinating. Moreover, it gave me some hope that specialists are out there looking for novel treatments to help with the difficult fight against Neuroendocrine Cancer.This is an article about something generally described as "Intra-operative Chemotherapy", i.e. the administration of chemo during surgery.  This isn't any old article - this is written by someone who is very well-known in Neuroendocrine…
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10Apr 2020 by Ronny Allan 2 Comments
Neuroendocrine Cancer Surgery 3: my distant lymph nodes

Neuroendocrine Cancer Surgery 3: my distant lymph nodes

Treatment
"An unusual disposition of tumours"A fairly common disposition of Neuroendocrine Neoplasms is a primary with associated local/regional secondary's (e.g. lymph nodes), and often with liver metastases for late diagnoses. Apart from the primary tumour invading nearby tissue/organs, the most common spread is the lymph nodes, these can take you from a localised Stage 1 to loco-regional Stages 2 and 3. Often the term distant spread infers metastatic disease (stage 4) to the liver, but I had some lymph nodes 'misbehaving' much further away than that. After my first nuclear scan (In-111 Octreoscan) during my diagnostic workup in Jul-Aug 2010, two areas lit up - left axillary nodes (armpit) and left supraclavicular fossa (SCF) nodes (clavicle). However, my MDT remained focussed on my primary and liver metastasis as this was where…
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27Feb 2017 by Ronny Allan 4 Comments
It’s been 10 years since I saw a scalpel (….but my surgeon is still on speed dial)

It’s been 10 years since I saw a scalpel (….but my surgeon is still on speed dial)

Living with Neuroendocrine Cancer, Survivorship, Treatment
In 2012, I had a bunch of lymph nodes removed. Two separate areas were resected, only one was showing growth but both were showing up as hotspots on an Octreoscan.  I had known since shortly after diagnosis in 2010 that 'hotspots' were showing in my left 'axillary' lymph nodes (armpit) and my left 'supraclavicular fossa' (SCF) lymph nodes (clavicle area). Some 10 months previously, I had a major liver resection, and 5 months prior to the liver resection, I had a small intestinal primary removed including work on some associated complications.  There had always been a plan to optimise cytoreduction of my distant metastases, it was just a matter of timing. I still can't get my head around why metastases from a small intestinal NET managed to get to this area but…
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17Jan 2017 by Ronny Allan 18 Comments
Neuroendocrine Cancer: Nodes, Nodules, Lesions (and false alarms!)

Neuroendocrine Cancer: Nodes, Nodules, Lesions (and false alarms!)

Living with Neuroendocrine Cancer, Survivorship, Treatment
A fairly common disposition of Neuroendocrine Neoplasms is a primary with associated local/regional secondary's (e.g. lymph nodes), and often with liver metastases. Technically speaking, the liver is distant. However, many metastatic patients appear to have additional and odd appearances in even more distant places, including (but not limited to) the extremities and the head & neck. Certain things are known about the behaviour of Neuroendocrine Neoplasms (NENs) (a term for Neuroendocrine Tumours and Neuroendocrine Carcinoma) and specialists will be analysing many factors when working out the type of NEN and how it might behave. This is useful in cases of unknown primaries as it can give them clues to the possible location(s). Read more about these issues in my article "Needle in a Haystack".How does cancer spread? In addition to…
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