Change of Plans

Good afternoon to everyone. We have had an interesting day. Unfortunately, the news isn't very good. The CT scan done this morning hadn't been read officially at the time of my doctor's appointment at 10:30 this morning, but Dr. Chen invited Patti and I into the viewing room to look over the images and to compare them to the ones from July 21st, the last one I had done. What we did see was enlarging lesions in several areas of the lungs and a few more scattered new lesions.

What this means is that the chemotherapy I have been getting has mostly been ineffective and I wasn't admitted again to the hospital (YIPPEE!). We discussed options for treatment at this point and discussed several types of chemotherapy that have been used for sarcoma. Not many of which she favored due to being ineffective as well.

Ultimately, Dr. Chen recommended a cocktail of drugs that she has used for sarcoma with some success pointing out that a previous patient with sarcoma in three body areas did respond well to this regimen. This involves no hospital admission, but does require three days of infusion of two of the drugs and taking an oral drug for a certain number of days during each cycle. This process would be repeated every three weeks and has all the same potential side effects; nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite, kidney problems, increased risk of infection, bleeding, ringing in the ears (I've had that for years anyway), allergic reactions and of course, potential for causing leukemia months to years down the road. Oh yeah, hair loss, but I have that problem solved with my Spiffy Jim's Toupee Kit.

I don't know for sure how many cycles of treatment are going to be given. Just like this last treatment program, after two or three cycles, I will have another CT and or MRI to see what is going on with the sarcoma.

The 2 new IV drugs are; Cisplatin and Doxorubicin Liposoma. The oral drug is Temodar. The oral drug is new and we checked with the pharmacy there at the hospital and discovered that our co-pay for this new oral drug will be well over $600.00 every cycle.

This morning, Patti had shirts ready for us to wear that were matching in color. When we got to the clinic, the medical assistant helping us had on scrubs the same color. Now talk about color coordination, who would have ever thought that we'd all show up in the same color. It was quite amusing.



Once again, I express my sincerest and deepest appreciation to everyone for their continued prayers and well wishes. You keep us both going.

God bless you all.

Jim & Patti