- Re: distant mets

[Guest guest]

jordan07282000 wrote:

> I live in a very small town (pop <1000), and ironically there is

> another woman with thyroid cancer. I thought I was young at 29, but

> she is only 22. She is a little bit " ahead " of me in terms of her dx

> & tx, and she just found out she has cancer in her lungs & liver...

Hi, -

When you say your friend has cancer in her lungs and liver, are you referring to

thyca mets?

If not, then please ignore the rest of this letter.

Assuming that you DO mean thyca mets, this may sound impudent, but may I ask you

when this was determined, and how your friend knows she has them in her liver

and lungs? I ask because liver mets, in

particular, are extremely rare. Of the thousands of members of this group over

the years, there have been quite a few scares, but only one case where thyca

metastasized to the liver. In fact, it's so

rare, that one of the top thyca specialists in this country was quoted here as

saying that it " doesn't happen " ; if it weren't for that one member several

years ago, I would have believed it.

Mets to the lungs are, unfortunately, not as rare, but they're not all that

common, either.

My guess is that your friend recently had RAI treatment, and her follow up scan

showed uptake in the chest and liver, and the radiologist, relatively

inexperienced in reading RAI scans, concluded that this

uptake was cancer. RAI uptake in the liver is normal and to be expected;

uptake in the thymus is, too, and is often misread to be in the lungs. It takes

an experienced radiologist to know the

difference.

If I have jumped to too many conclusions, please forgive me. But if your

friend's liver and lung mets were diagnosed on a post RAI scan by a radiologist

in a small town hospital, I would seek another

opinion before proceeding with any further treatment for those mets.

(not a doctor, not a radiologist)

NYC