Treatment Update
Once again it has been awhile since I posted. Not as long as the last gap but long enough. I'm not really here to write about my cancer, but I'll start with a quick update. (I write this as if I think somebody is reading it, but I don't think anyone is. So I can be completely honest.)
Finally started chemo in late August, doing 7 hours of chemo for two weeks with one week off after. So two on one off. Did this for three cycles, then they did a Contrast CT scan to see if it was working (working in this case meaning slowing the liver cancer that will kill me before the 2020 election if the doctors are right). It was not working. Didn't slow the metastatic liver cancer at all apparently.
Doctor had said this was the best set of drugs to treat me. Now they were stopping it, because it wasn't working. That sucked all by itself. Seemed to mean to me that the max 18 month window was shrinking, though when I asked my oncologist she said no, she had a new combination of drugs (which I still call 2nd best) to try. After she convinced me that it was worth it to try (I still wonder), I agreed.
These drugs--there are 3 this time--are administered slightly differently. The first two are done in the infusion center. Takes about 5 hours. Then they hang a pump on me, and I get the 3rd drug (called, I am not joking, 5-FU) over 48 hours. So I take my chemo home on Monday afternoon and go back Wednesday afternoon to have the empty pump removed.
So from Monday afternoon through now (Saturday morning) I feel various stages of not good. This past week, I've slept a lot. And I have felt more nauseous this week than in the whole of the previous months of chemo.
On the positive side, Doctor says preliminary blood tests after the first set of two treatments show positive results. We'll see how the next scan goes. I'm a little unclear about when that scan will occur. This chemo is one week of drugs and one week off, no doubt to recover from the first week. Two of those one on one off constitute a set. Are we gonna go three months (which I thought she said last time we talked about it) before the next scan, which puts us into February, or will they scan after three sets, which I think puts the next scan in January? I dunno. We'll see.
So that's the update. Maybe by next weekend I'll be feeling human again. In the meantime, I have set a goal of making it to October 6, 2019.
Finally started chemo in late August, doing 7 hours of chemo for two weeks with one week off after. So two on one off. Did this for three cycles, then they did a Contrast CT scan to see if it was working (working in this case meaning slowing the liver cancer that will kill me before the 2020 election if the doctors are right). It was not working. Didn't slow the metastatic liver cancer at all apparently.
Doctor had said this was the best set of drugs to treat me. Now they were stopping it, because it wasn't working. That sucked all by itself. Seemed to mean to me that the max 18 month window was shrinking, though when I asked my oncologist she said no, she had a new combination of drugs (which I still call 2nd best) to try. After she convinced me that it was worth it to try (I still wonder), I agreed.
These drugs--there are 3 this time--are administered slightly differently. The first two are done in the infusion center. Takes about 5 hours. Then they hang a pump on me, and I get the 3rd drug (called, I am not joking, 5-FU) over 48 hours. So I take my chemo home on Monday afternoon and go back Wednesday afternoon to have the empty pump removed.
So from Monday afternoon through now (Saturday morning) I feel various stages of not good. This past week, I've slept a lot. And I have felt more nauseous this week than in the whole of the previous months of chemo.
On the positive side, Doctor says preliminary blood tests after the first set of two treatments show positive results. We'll see how the next scan goes. I'm a little unclear about when that scan will occur. This chemo is one week of drugs and one week off, no doubt to recover from the first week. Two of those one on one off constitute a set. Are we gonna go three months (which I thought she said last time we talked about it) before the next scan, which puts us into February, or will they scan after three sets, which I think puts the next scan in January? I dunno. We'll see.
So that's the update. Maybe by next weekend I'll be feeling human again. In the meantime, I have set a goal of making it to October 6, 2019.
posted by Tom | 10:25 AM
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