Question: My short question is how long until my wife dies of metastatic breast cancer?
The longer version is, are there clinical markers that indicate 3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days?
Background: aggressive recurrent breast cancer to liver detected symptomatically 28 months ago while on arimidex, treated heavily with various chemo and 3 clinical trial drugs, hospitalized 3 weeks ago with CT showing significant proliferation in liver and new peritoneal implants, liver function markers above range for first time, now at home on hospice care, bedridden 95% of day, on oxygen, no pain but shortness of breath, 30 pounds of ascites/edema fluid. Still eating t.i.d. DVT in left thigh.

Dr. XXXXXXX

Thanks, I understand the difficulty in predicting her endpoint especially without seeing her yourself. Your answer is consistent with her oncologist who said doubtful 6 months, XXXXXXX likely 3 months, possibly as short as a couple weeks. Indeed, it's difficult to predict.

I'm mainly asking if there are any indicators that are strong predictors of death within X period of weeks. I have no idea, but if for example she becomes too weak to rise from the bed and go to the bathroom herself, does that mean she's down to 3-4 weeks? Is there a clinical trend to track like I did with her contractions before she gave birth to our two sons? I don't want the timing of her death to be a XXXXXXX to any of us, because we have much left to do. And there's the risk of hepatic encephalopathy which could render her unable to make good decisions which are yet to come. The obvious answer it to get things done, but that's not yet happening in her mind. I'm trying to reduce my own uncertainty by drawing on your experience seeing many patients die of end stage liver disease/cancer.