Hi Magenta,
Welcome to this forum of lovely caring people.  I am sorry I am not conversant with mums cancer but hopefully someone will log on who can assist.
When is mums MRI booked for?  It is a terrible time you are going through, tests and waiting for results .  I do fully understand, been there.
This post will put you back you to top of the list so I do hope someone with knowledge of mums cancer can advise you further.  Please avoid googling as info not always  up to date and  may paint worst case scenario as you will yourself already know.
Thinking of you and family
Kathy x 
 

It is very frustrating the lack of information on this cancer. My wife was diagnosed in May and due to the size of the tumour (quite large apparently) is having a 12 week chemo course to try to shrink it before possible surgery.

I can sympathise with all the tests and waiting and it seems to take ages.

Do they sometimes not operate on cancer in the duodenum? Apparently my wife's cancer hasn't spread and may have been there a couple of years. 

Seems all the cancer websites are expert on breast cancer scenarios but up to date information about cancer in the duodenum seems non existent.

Hi Magenta and RickG,

I hope you don’t mind, one of the moderators asked me to post something.  The duodenum is part of the small bowel and so you’ll be better off looking for information about ‘small bowel cancer’.  You can find our information about this type of cancer by clicking here.

Small bowel cancer is rare and is categorised as a separate cancer to large bowel cancers (often just known as bowel cancer or colorectal cancer).  One of the reasons for this is that, depending on the type of small bowel cancer, it can behave differently and can be treated differently to large bowel cancer. Another charity called Macmillan Cancer Support have similar information here.

  
There is slightly more detailed information on the American Cancer Society website.  Small bowel cancer is more likely to be referred to as small intestine cancer in the US, just click here to see it.   Of course some of the information, such as the statistics won’t be relevant to the UK.

You will read on both these pages that chemotherapy is not always used to treat small bowel cancer and is more experimental.  This very much depends on individual circumstances.  In the treatment of cancer, chemotherapy is often used with the aim to try to shrink a cancer so that it can make surgery possible, or easier.  The medical term for this is ‘neoadjuvant chemotherapy’.  As small bowel cancer is rare, I’m afraid I don’t really have a sense of how often neoadjuvant chemotherapy is given to people with small bowel cancer, or how effective this is (you ask whether some people with duodenal cancer would not have an operation).  But I can say that neoadjuvant treatment is mentioned in the medical literature as a possible treatment for adenocarcinoma of the duodenum.

Magenta, its difficult to comment on your mum's situation. But if there is a possibility her  cancer has spread, the medical team would want to do some further tests to confirm whether this is the case.  A surgeon would not want to put their patient through a major operation if there is still cancer elsewhere in the body. An exception to this may be an operation to clear a blockage in the bowel as this could help to relieve symptoms.  The consultant may think that other treatments are more appropriate for a person whose cancer has spread.  I hope your mum’s medical team are able to give your family some more definite information soon and you have the opportunity to ask your questions.

I hope this is helpful.  Please feel free to telephone the information nurses if you want to talk things through.  our freephone number is 0808 800 4040 and we are open from Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.
 

Kind regards,
Helen

Thanks Helen

The last two months have gone very slowly but my wife has had her 4th chemo (Oxyplatin) and is awaiting a CT scan on 30th. The consultant has been quite positive as she has put on some weight, however the chemo has not been pleasant with bad reactions during course 2 and 3 and a little less on the final one which was a reduced (75%) one. After a week she is still very tired but coping. Thank goodness we still have an NHS in this country and despite the NHS cuts by what appears to be an uncaring Tory Government we have received an excellent service. We have everything crossed fro the CT scan and hope they can operate in a few weeks but even then it is very unclear from all the cancer information what to expect.

Good luck everyone.

It's been 22 months since I last posted but this has popped up on my computer and given the recent Charlie Gard publicity I wanted to post again. My wife sadly died on 7 December 2015 some 7 months after diagnosis. I think we probably all knew that the chance of a cure was very slim indeed. It is important to keep hopeful as that was the only way I think we coped. The NHS staff in Bristol were excellent and despite all their efforts nothing could be done. Being a bit of a 'fixit' 'JFDI' sort of person I found that there were all sorts of American websites promising the earth but on deeper study no evidence was really there. We were strongly advised that pursuing such routes would not benefit her and could actually be detrimental. It is so difficult finding a balance accepting that all that was sensibly being done was being done.

Hello I so wish our endoscopic technician had that hunch when he/she failed numerous times to pass a stricture! Now we are dealing with terminal stomach cancer despite numerous scans and scopes and biopsies So angry

if only they'd used a child's endoscope camera then we may not be so far down the cancer line

Thanks for explaining this so nicely. I’ve been struggling to find information about this type of cancer.