size?

[Margaret]

Lucy...I have often wondered that myself. My husband's first tumor was over 9cm by 8 cm and I was scared about its size. He had a second one that was only detected post chemo because the first one was so large, they never even saw the 2nd one.

I always thought the size of the tumor related to how long he had the cancer...and if that is the case, my husband had his cancer at least a year (accord. to the Dr.) before he went to the doctor.

Good luck!

Margaret

[dadmo]

w4lucy:
The bike riding wouldn't have any effect on tumor growth and that's a question that comes up a lot. As you and your husband will find out, and I'm sure you heard it before, the waiting is the worst part of this whole ordeal. Please keep us posted as you get more information.

[w4lucy]

thanks for your response--DH's tumor was around 3.1x2.9x1cm, which was almost the size of the testicle itself. It seems crazy that we didn't notice anything until it had gotten so large. We recently started bike riding and though he hasn't ridden a whole lot, we've both been curious if that perhaps irritated the mass and caused it to grow? Is that silly to think or is it possible? The dr. guessed he has had it for 6months to a year--wow. It just seems so unreal still...

We meet w/the oncologist again on Wednesday to go over last week's bloodwork and the rest of the pathology report on the tumor. The waiting has been so hard...

[Sans rt1]

Not a stupid question at all.

Some of the articles I read referred to greater odds of recurrence with larger tumors, say 4cm or 5 cm, than smaller tumors (this was just one of several factors in the studies). But the bigger influence is the type of tumor and how well developed it is - whether it has vascular or lymphatic invasion - which gives it what it needs to spread more readily.

[w4lucy]

Just curious: does the actual size of the tumor say anything? For example--is it better if it's smaller? If so, what would be considered small and what would be considered large? Maybe that's a stupid question, but I was just curious...