In Reply to: surgery?? posted by joe on July 11, 2008 at 00:08:00:
Dear Joseph,
I think that major surgeries are probably out for those patients who have metastasized sarcoma. Sometimes if the primary shrinks from the chemo and they think a surgery will help, they'll do it, but generally they think there's no point otherwise.
A lot would depend on how the tumor has worked its way into your lung. If it was localized, I could see them removing it.
My husband had cardiac angiosarcoma and I had a very hard time understanding why they couldn't just go in and take it out. They kept saying they could replace parts of the heart with animal and artificial parts, so just do it, or so I thought. But when he finally did have a surgery, I guess the tumor was too worked into too many structures in the heart to take it out. Before the surgery, he had used different chemos to control the growth and was essentially in a "stable disease" situation. But having the surgery caused him to metastasize very rapidly. Within two weeks after surgery, he had mets in kidneys, bowels, brain, lungs, liver, etc., etc. And he died six weeks after surgery.
I know that's probably a hard story to hear and it doesn't mean it would happen to you. But it does explain why they are reluctant to surgically remove your sarcoma. Keep talking to different doctors though--some are more aggressive than others and you are very young. Maybe one of them would take a chance and try it.
I hate this awful disease and admire your willingness to fight.