Saturday, August 29, 2009

Kris, Dave and the Lumps: Round 3, Chemo #1

2009-Aug-28, Friday
Went in for Chemo, 10 am Appointment. Saw Dr. Moran and he upped our dosage of blood thinners as Kris was at a 1.4 where they want her at a about a 2 for I and R (clotting factor).

When we got to an infusion station, the nurse asked us if we know about the ins and outs of the drugs we were to receive: Avastin and Ixempra. Kris explained that one worked in a similar fashion as Herceptin and the other worked similar to Taxotere. The nurse indicated that was all wrong and went off to get paperwork and a consent form. She came back with paperwork saying that Avastin attacks blood cells that 'feed' a tumor. This causes the tumor to, essentially, starve and die. It's a targeted therapy and thus the nurse had a better understanding of why Dr. Moran described it as being 'like' Herceptin since Herceptin is a targeted therapy. Ixempra is not a targeted therapy and has the side effects we don't want: hair loss, sensitivity in hands and feet, sores can show up in the mouth, headaches, etc. It is also in the same family of drugs as Taxotere and the side effects put it in a similar enough category that the nurse again understood why Dr. Moran described it as similar to Taxotere (score two for Kris!).

The one big surprise was that the infusion took something less than 6 hours. We didn't leave until 4 pm. Now, we did expect the first infusion to be slow since they like to monitor for allergic reactions but, this seemed a long time to us.

While there Kris talked with a gentleman who has reoccurring Lymphoma. The treatment is a protein which feeds the Lymphoma. The twist is that they give him a protein from mice, twice a year. The cancer jumps on, and eats, this protein like a cat jumping on a saucer of fresh cream. However, once the cancer eats this protein the body rejects the cancer as it's now got appearances of being from a mouse!

We also saw a young man, about 17 give or take a year, who was being treated with Gemzar which we recognized as a cancer drug Kris had used in Round 1. Not sure what he has but it was sad to see someone so young with cancer. That said, he looked to be quite fit and was well supported by what looked like a father and girl friend (sisters just aren't that affectionate... or at least, I hope they are normally not that affectionate). Because of this, I don't doubt he will recovery quickly and do well in the long run!

After the treatment we were suitably hungry. Oh, I should note that early in the treatment Kris was cold (even before the infusion started). So, I grabbed a couple of blankets for her. She cast them off as the sun Westered since the center is a room with one wall of glass facing the mountains and the room got to be quite warm. When we left, it was 90 degrees outside. As we were heading to the restaurant we'd chosen, she complained of being achy (one of the side effects) but, it seemed to her to be far too early for side effects. She decided that maybe it was the heat. So, we headed home instead. Oddly, she felt better as we were driving home and other than being a bit tired, she seems fine.

Next appointment is Monday with the Surgeon in follow up of the Port installation. Then it's Dr. Moran a week from this coming Tuesday. And three weeks from now for the next Chemo treatment.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Kris, Dave and the Lumps: Port installation #3

Friday, 14-August-2009
On Tuesday Kris pointed out that she had a very minor infection on one of her fingers. Dr. Moran hemmed and hawed over it and decided to write out a prescription for antibiotics. If the infection didn't go away Thursday, fill it and start it. So, Friday... we filled it and started the course of Anti-B's. In no small part because we had surgery coming up and figured it'd be a good idea to be on them prior to the surgery.

Monday, 17-August-2009
We took Kris in at 10 AM for the surgery to install her newest port for the Chemo Therapy and everything was quite boring, which in surgery speak means things went incredibly well!

Tuesday, 18-August-2009
Kris is doing well. Well enough to do some work which made her a wee bit tired so she knocked off a little bit early... it's not like she'd had surgery recently or anything. Things seem peachy though. Now it's time to heal up from the surgery and wait until Chemo on the 28th.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Kris, Dave and the Lumps: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Prequel:
Kris saw Dr. Jones last Thursday as a follow up to her biopsy surgery... he was 'ho hum' about things as her recovery from the surgery is going fine.

The Good:
Saw Dr. Moran (Oncologist) yesterday afternoon. Once again he was... guarded but, in my opinion, not as much as last time. The thing I was most worried about was the brain scan as it had implications I didn't even want to consider. Dr. Moran talked about everything throughout the conversation except the Brain scan... finally, at the end, I asked him if his lack of talk about the Brain scan meant that it was clear and he confirmed that there was nothing on the Brain scan... well, there was evidence of the usual stuff, just nothing tumor like.

The Bad:
He's decided on two drugs. One was Avastin and he described this drug as being about as difficult to tolerate as the Herceptin, which Kris took totally in stride. The other is in the Taxol/Taxotere family of drugs and it will mean that she will lose her hair, again. She's decided she's only allowed to have hair about 2" in length! :) The down side is that this means she'll have to have another port installed. This will happen in the next two weeks followed fairly immediately by her first treatment.

The Ugly:
To be honest, the Ugly we already know about. It's what we don't know. Basically the cancer is being more tenacious than we'd all like and we are, to a certain extent, shooting in the dark. They don't have a tumor to aim at, and thus they don't have a lot of material to experiment with to come up with a good solid plan of attack. The current plan is to basically hit the system with the options we have left in hopes that it will kill the cancer. The only other option is to just sit back and wait for it to express itself in another tumor. Which runs the very real risk of waiting for it to metastasize, which it has not done. I asked and he agreed that it's entirely possible that the Herceptin was keeping the cancer at bay but, it's obviously not killing it so he doesn't seem to be enthused about using that drug again.