Meeting with oncologist at Finnish Cancer Society

Yesterday we had a meeting with an oncologist at the Finnish Cancer Society in town. We just wanted to talk face-to-face with a specialist as we had so many questions and there are still some days to wait until my first consultation at the hospital next Tuesday. The oncologist had in the past been working at the Tampere University Hospital and knew the oncologist I'm going to see next Tuesday.

We had all the papers with us and she looked through those. She said chemotherapy is the right treatment in my situation and that she would imagine I would be given a fairly new drug called Avastin (used in Finland for about two years) in combination with some other drugs. My wife had in fact read a bit about Avastin and it has shown good results on patients with my type of cancer. We discussed about the possibility of surgery and that the signal from last week's gastroenterologist was that surgery is not recommended. She was of the same opinion as in my case as the cancer has progressed so far both to the liver and to lymph nodes. Surgery could be an option in future if chemotherapy would give good results and the tumours would shrink.

The issue with surgery is an interesting topic that my wife has looked into as well. It seems liver transplants in general are much more frequent in other Nordic countries than in Finland. We are not sure if the same concerns also using surgery or liver transplants with liver metastases. We understood that the oncologist said surgery is becoming more used in Finland also, but that it seems the overall result in using surgery with metastases in liver are not better compared to chemotherapy.

We told here we had been mailing with this professor at the Helsinki University Hospital and she knew about him. We showed her the mail conversation we had had with him and she said we had been very active. We also asked how Finnish oncologists might feel about patients wanting second opinions. She said that was a very good question and that it may in fact upset some doctors. I asked if a doctor is offended, would they offer worse service as a ”penalty”. She answered that of course that will never be the case. She asked us if it would be OK for us if she contact the hospital oncologist and brief her about our discussion and we said that of course we don't mind. We feel better if the doctors cooperate in finding the best possible treatment right from the beginning.

By the way, she also mentioned she had never heard about a patient getting so fast into treatment as I now had. That was also good to hear, and I guess shows I'm given a high priority at the hospital.