Slow Progress, But Progress

Slow as it may be, it is still progress. I am sitting in the infusion center today, receiving my second infusion of this round of chemo. For those of you keeping track, this makes my 8th infusion. I had two in March and April. Those were followed by 5 weeks of radiation therapy and then surgery on the primary tumor in July and then I had two more rounds of chemo infusion.

It was after those two infusions that additional cat scan studies showed that the chemo I was receiving was doing nothing for the cancer that has spread from the primary tumor under my right arm to my lungs. The decision was then made to switch to different chemo drugs as a trial.

What I have come to learn through all of this is that this is all a very slow process with time between treatments that is difficult to deal with. I am used to being busier. Although the chemo doesn’t leave me feeling very well or even capable of doing much between treatments, I’d much rather be at work and being productive – caring for my patients and providing for my family in the way I am accustomed to.

The new chemo drugs seem to be much less toxic mentally, but do leave me feeling quite sick for a week or so after I finish them. I’ve had problems with anemia and very low platelets, which put me at risk for bleeding and such.

Fortunately, the new drugs do seem to be working. As I reported previously, for the first time, it appears that there are no new lesions in my lungs and the previously noted lesions have reduced in size.

As I understand it, the radiologists have been measuring several of the larger lesions that are easy to identify on the CT studies. As time has gone forward, these have all increased in size from study to study and there had been a new crop of smaller lesions appearing throughout both of my lungs – too small to measure, but quite obvious on the images.

I have attached three imaged here to today’s posting. These are comparison views with an image from September on the left and an image from the most recent CT the first part of November on the right. Note the measured lesions on both images and see the difference in those measurements. There is some significant improvement.

Since these are 2 dimensional images representing 3 dimensional lesions, there is some formula that the oncologist here uses to estimate volume. I have long forgotten my geometry to be able to do that.

As we met with the oncology team yesterday, the oncologist (Dr. Lei Chen) was quite excited with the improvement in the CT scan findings. Because of the apparent success of this new treatment, she plans on two more infusion of which I have already had four – this will make a total of six with the new stuff and four of the old stuff. She informed us that this will be the maximum lifetime allowable of one of the drugs (doxirubicin) that has been used in both treatments.

I am scheduled for another CT scan on the 22nd and my next IV infusion on the 29th, 30th and 31st of this month. What a way to end the year. Three weeks later (or so), I will get the last infusion.

We were informed yesterday that the next step will be surgical removal of the residual lesions (the bigger ones) in my lungs. This will involve two surgeries, one for the left side, one for the right side. I don’t know in what order they will be done nor do I know exactly when they will be done. There has to be some time after the chemo, just like my last surgery, to allow things to settle down so that skin will heal and so forth. The idea behind this surgery is to reduce the overall “tumor burden” as much as possible.

Once again, I have to express my absolute thanks and appreciation to EVERYONE that has been with us throughout this process (slow as it is). Without the faith and prayers of all of you, we are sure that we would not be where we are in this – making progress!

God bless you all!

Jim & Patti