Talk about your good news/bad news scenarios! In the May 20 episode of The Bold and the Beautiful, Grace informed Liam that there might be an outside chance of saving him or, at very least, keeping him around longer. But — since there’s always a dang “but” — the doctor added that “it may have a serious impact on your quality of life.”

What does that mean, exactly? On one hand, it suggests that Liam will be faced with a challenging new obstacle to overcome — and Emmy winner Scott Clifton will get served up some meaty material into which he can sink his teeth. Finn explained that the combination of chemotherapy and radiation could leave the patient bedridden due to fatigue, nausea, organ and/or nerve damage. On the other hand, the twist implies that the Liam who emerges on the other side of the treatment may not be the Liam who enters into it.

More: Liam’s life and loves [PHOTOS]

In a way, Bold & Beautiful has been preparing us for a remix of Liam for quite a while now. Ever since he broke up with Hope and was rejected by Steffy, he’s been busying himself soul-searching. By the time he was struck down by that pesky tumor, he’d realized that, come to think of it, he wasn’t the kinda guy that he’d ever want to see dating his daughters, Kelly and Beth. He wouldn’t wish a waffler like himself on anybody. (And the list of Liam’s missteps is pretty long.)

Despite the potential miracle at hand, Liam wasn’t immediately sold on the idea of undergoing such harsh treatment. “At first I had no choice, and now I have a choice, but it’s basically an impossible one,” he lamented. “Yeah, sure, I give myself more time at the cost of we don’t even know what. How am I supposed to make a decision based on this?”

Adding to the difficulty of his dilemma is the experience that he shared with his late mother, after whom Kelly was named. “All I can think about right now is my mom and how much she suffered,” he said. “I mean, the cancer treatments, laying in that bed, she was like a skeleton. She was so frail. She was a shell of what she was before.

“That woman at the end was not my mom,” he added. “And I’m asking myself, like, ‘Do I want that for Kelly and Beth?’”

Of course, we’d be surprised if Liam ended up dying. But that doesn’t mean that his girls wouldn’t still be in for a helluva trauma. If along with the extreme treatment, he undergoes an extreme attitude adjustment, they as well as Steffy and Hope might not even recognize him anymore.