A Very LONG Big Day

It's just past 4am, actually on Friday. I mentioned that I had a CT scan on Tuesday and would get the results Thursday just before another chemo treament.

Well, that's not exactly what happened. :-)

Instead of the normal blood tests before chemo, they called me in to meet with my Oncologist first thing. RESULTS?? Well, no news is good news. There has been no growth in the masses in my liver. So, the Carboplatin/Gemcitibine combo seems to have at least kept them from getting any bigger. I take this as GOOD NEWS!

The tiny spots (1-3mm) ya millimeters! in my lungs have not changed either. The report said that really they couldn't see much. My doctor is not concerned about these and does not believe I have lung cancer as primary, but they mention them on each CT scan just in case there IS a change.

SO, my Dr is now recommending that we put the Gemcitibine "in our back pocket" since we know that at least it seems to be effective and stopping growth. Let's not wear it out. OK, so then what?

She wants me to switch to a once every 3 weeks series of a combo of Carboplatin and Taxol. Hmmmmmm. The idea is that the Taxol might actually SHRINK the liver masses. The side effects might be a bit more severe, but then I've not had very many side effects at all on the Gem, so I'm in pretty good shape to try it.

We went around a bit about scheduling since I want to go home and visit family from the 20th to the 30th of OCT. This was planned on my old schedule, and we set up the next chemo for next week. Ok, but I really wanted to be able to attend a banquet where my boss/company is up for a Wells Fargo sponsored award in customer service. so if I could avoid a 5 HOUR chemo treatment that day, sure would be nice!

While juggling a bit more, she mentions that actually it seems that if someone responds with muscle/bone pain from this new protocol, it tends to happen 3-4 days after treatment. AUGGGH! That would place me on a plane flight when it hit.

So, bottom line is that in a few hours I'm going in for this new treatment. 10am my time (currently Pacific). IT's now 4:30 am and I'm wide awake. Oh FUN

I've been having some heavier lung congestion than usual the last week or so, and when I told the Dr that she prescibed me dexamethasone (a corticosteroid) to take tonight and in the morning before I go in for Chemo. Seems to be keeping me up.

This whole thing started because I had a persistent cough and on and off heavy congestion, so it's just a timing thing that it's happening now I guess.

Conclusion for today? I think the CT scan was good news. I had all sorts of questions prepared for this appt. questioning why not do more targeted treatment in my liver, other kinds of treatment,etc. Her answers seemed reasonable to me, in that continuing to chemo my entire system can still get at the "unknown primary" and while I am tolerating it well and not growing the tumors, to work on finding a way to make them smaller. She assured me that that is not ALL in our aresenal. At any point we could target any area that starts to cause problems or switch to another methodology.

I worry a bit that I'm being a bit willy-nilly about all this, and maybe I am. There's so little information on unknown primaries and on liver cancer that is not surgically removed that I don't have much else to go on. Bottom line I guess it makes sense to me to be as aggressive as I can as long as my body is giving me "go ahead" messages.

One odd note - which makes me wish I understood more about CT scans. my Dr mentioned that they saw THREE masses in my liver this time, not Four! Was the other guy hiding or what? Weird!

Ok, gonna try to close the peepers for a bit. Wish me luck tomorrow!