Back to surgery with you!
So, I have neglected my LJ duties while on these oral meds so here is the currentness of my cancer fight.
I have been on Zelboraf for about 2 months. After the first month they cut my dose down a bit so the joint pain and nausea wasn't so much. I still have it and I am down to having a bad day every 2-3 instead of EVERY stinkin day. I had a new PET scan about 10 days ago to see how things were going. As always with this it is good news/bad news. The good news is that all the tumors in my abdomen are currently non-detectable. Huzzah! The medication isn't designed as a cure so basically it is suppressing the growth of the tumors for now and the normal efficacy is about 6-8 months but that is 6-8 months of nothing in my abdomen trying to kill me. The bad news is that this drug doesn't cross the blood/brain barrier so where did the cancer go? To my brain of course.
I have 3 tumors in my head, two are of the very very small (2-3mm) variety but one is 2.5-3cm. It is in the right temporal lobe. The initial word from the docs was to hit me with a high single dose of radiation to get rid of these tumors but the larger one is just on the edge of being too big for that. So Wednesday (tomorrow) I am going to have it surgically removed. Brain surgery just doesn't have a good ring to it. I am told I will be in the hospital for a couple of days then a couple of weeks for recovery. Once that is done I will go in for the single dose radiation shots at each of the two smaller tumors as well as the hole where the big one was in case they missed anything (don't want to take too much extra, I might need those brains). After all of that is done I will likely go back into the hospital for another round of IL-2. IL-2 is the only thing that has a snowball's chance in hell of providing a cure and if it can do it then I will try just about anything.
So off to the hospital today for my mapping MRI and pre-op labs then tomorrow it is go time. Thanks for all of your concerns and prayers, see you on the other side ;)
I have been on Zelboraf for about 2 months. After the first month they cut my dose down a bit so the joint pain and nausea wasn't so much. I still have it and I am down to having a bad day every 2-3 instead of EVERY stinkin day. I had a new PET scan about 10 days ago to see how things were going. As always with this it is good news/bad news. The good news is that all the tumors in my abdomen are currently non-detectable. Huzzah! The medication isn't designed as a cure so basically it is suppressing the growth of the tumors for now and the normal efficacy is about 6-8 months but that is 6-8 months of nothing in my abdomen trying to kill me. The bad news is that this drug doesn't cross the blood/brain barrier so where did the cancer go? To my brain of course.
I have 3 tumors in my head, two are of the very very small (2-3mm) variety but one is 2.5-3cm. It is in the right temporal lobe. The initial word from the docs was to hit me with a high single dose of radiation to get rid of these tumors but the larger one is just on the edge of being too big for that. So Wednesday (tomorrow) I am going to have it surgically removed. Brain surgery just doesn't have a good ring to it. I am told I will be in the hospital for a couple of days then a couple of weeks for recovery. Once that is done I will go in for the single dose radiation shots at each of the two smaller tumors as well as the hole where the big one was in case they missed anything (don't want to take too much extra, I might need those brains). After all of that is done I will likely go back into the hospital for another round of IL-2. IL-2 is the only thing that has a snowball's chance in hell of providing a cure and if it can do it then I will try just about anything.
So off to the hospital today for my mapping MRI and pre-op labs then tomorrow it is go time. Thanks for all of your concerns and prayers, see you on the other side ;)