Heart mets?

I have pericardial mets. The pericardium is the outer covering of the heart. I also had pleural mets. I had tiredness shortness of breath and coughing incessantly. I had a pericardial window cut and a pleuradesis last October. I continued with Xeloda and now stabl

I also have pericardial mets. When I recurred way back in 2010, I had lots of bone mets and was also found to have a moderate pericardial effusion. We did not biopsy the fluid but it cleared up when I went on treatment which indicates it was almost certainly metastatic.

Then in 2017, when the treatment I was on at the time had begun to fail, I wound up in ER with cardiac tamponade. One side of my heart was already flattened from fluid buildup and I was on the verge of a coronary. I had an emergency pericardiocentesis and was in the hospital for a week with a tube draining my chest, about a liter of malignant fluid drained all told. I then was on oxygen at home for seven weeks because having that massive jug of fluid in my chest did some damage to my lungs. Recovery was slow and really awful.

The oncologists who studied seven years' worth of my scans while I was in the hospital concluded that I have had some pericardial metastasis all along-- so that means 8 years now. You can see from my signature info below that I've been on several lines of treatment. Taxol has kept the pericardial mets stable for 17 months now, thankfully.

Glad there's finally a thread here for this. I have been the lone ranger with pericardial mets here for a long time!

Same here. So thankful for everyone sharing info.

Nlimburg, I can offer you some encouragement here. I have also had almost a liter of metastatic fluid drawn from my pericardium and was in cardiac tamponade at the time-- one ventricle was completely flattened on the scan. The heart surgeon said I was within a couple of hours of a coronary. I was in the cardiac ward for a week while it continued to drain even more. That was January 2016. I stopped Xeloda, which had obviously failed after three good years, and started Taxol right away (just an hour after I was dismissed from the hospital). I could not breathe on my own right afterward due to lung damage from the tamponade, so I was on oxygen 24/7 for about 7 weeks while my lungs recovered strength. I was on Taxol for almost two years, which was not fun but it did abolish the pericardial mets really fast. The effusion has not returned. I took Halaven for 5-6 months after Taxol failed, then switched to Verzenio/Fas in March. My bones are a mess still but my heart is clear.

Hang in there, and don't consult Dr. Google too much. Recovery from pericardial effusion is very possible!

I am recovering after the window but it has been a slow process. I just barely came off oxygen at night this week. So no oxygen any more-yay. I was taking xeloda when this all happened so obviously it wasn’t working anymore. My dr wanted me to start a study-as part of the study I had to be off chemo for 1month. So that was scary. Now I am on a parp inhibitor (Lynparza) and also tecentriq which is immunotherapy. My ca 15 has come down for 95 to 77 and I am feeling better so I think it is working. I also had pulmonary embolisms at the same time and a large blood clot in my leg which caused extreme swelling and pain. In addition, to top things off, I have a paralyzed vocal cord which makes me hoarse and also causes problems with swallowing. They say it’s from nerve damage from the Mets in my chest