Hi All,
I have metastatic Ocular Melanoma, and have been fighting mets in the liver for 9 years. I have mets in the liver, lungs, peritoneum, abdominal wall, and more.
Hi All,
I have metastatic Ocular Melanoma, and have been fighting mets in the liver for 9 years. I have mets in the liver, lungs, peritoneum, abdominal wall, and more.
I would like to share with you something that has come up recently for me as a consequence of metastatic cancer that I never heard of before. The condition is hypercalcemia–too much calcium in the blood. In my case, I ended up in the hospital for 3 days while they figured out the situation and what to do about it. They think it is caused by the melanoma itself, which releases some substance that encourages calcium to be leached out of my bones. For anybody this is pretty serious, but for an old lady like me, it's scary. I will end up getting zometa, which only will slow down the leaching. Nothing can replace the calcium already leached out. Be sure to note that I do not have any bone mets, if my hypercalcemia is caused by cancer, it is all soft tissue cancer.
They checked out and rejected the most obvious cause, parathyroid involvement, and probably other possible causes, but settled on cancer as the default hypothesis.
The possible symptoms of hypercalcemia are wide-ranging: for e.g., confusion, memory loss, constipation, abdominal pain, kidney stones, etc. etc. The condition of hypercalcemia is discovered by a simple blood test.
Has anyone encountered hypercalcemia due to cancer before?
Esther
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