Esophageal Cancer is usually a cancer that is not discovered until late in staging because it has very few symptoms. Early symptoms could include chronic heartburn (more than 4 times a month), mild back pain, reflux, weight loss, but often times there are NO EARLY SYMPTOMS! Later symptoms include difficulty swallowing, throwing up, nausea, regurgitation, excessive saliva, coughing, chest pain, upper airway obstruction, fever, shortness of breath and jaundice.
Persons that have an increased risk for esophageal cancer have a history of cancer in the family, and reflux. Obesity, smoking, drinking, men and being over 60 (average age is 67) put a person at increased risk.
With all this that we NOW know, my dad really did not have much warning at all. He has none of the criteria to be at increased risk and almost none of the early symptoms. He did on occasion have heartburn, but not chronic. Also, looking back he did have some back pain during this past summer but he had also started playing racquetball at the gym and chalked it up to being sore after a workout as it went away. (This was also about the time I had him help me move into my new house and paint my entire house).
After doing blood tests at MD Anderson, the doctors even told him that there would have been no way to know about the cancer from routine blood tests as his count looked so good! They said he was one of the healthiest EC patients they'd ever seen!
This is incredibly scary to know, but also a bit comforting because we know that we could not have caught this earlier unless we were psychics!!!
Persons that have an increased risk for esophageal cancer have a history of cancer in the family, and reflux. Obesity, smoking, drinking, men and being over 60 (average age is 67) put a person at increased risk.
With all this that we NOW know, my dad really did not have much warning at all. He has none of the criteria to be at increased risk and almost none of the early symptoms. He did on occasion have heartburn, but not chronic. Also, looking back he did have some back pain during this past summer but he had also started playing racquetball at the gym and chalked it up to being sore after a workout as it went away. (This was also about the time I had him help me move into my new house and paint my entire house).
After doing blood tests at MD Anderson, the doctors even told him that there would have been no way to know about the cancer from routine blood tests as his count looked so good! They said he was one of the healthiest EC patients they'd ever seen!
This is incredibly scary to know, but also a bit comforting because we know that we could not have caught this earlier unless we were psychics!!!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment