Treatment 10 5/3/08
This is my first designed-for-blog post, and will be brief. I was treated on Wednesday and I have been struggling to deal with the nausea and pain. Each treatment is getting more difficult than the one that preceded it. I have two more chemotherapy treatments coming. Considering the possibility of additional treatments – because of a recurrence, or something worse - is terrifying. The thought itself, the act of writing about it, makes me ill.
Two items to file under “good news”:
1) My doctors believe I am unlikely to require additional chemotherapy in the foreseeable future. You can see the treatment protocols used by the Lombardi Center physicians responsible for my care. They are from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, and show the “decision trees” that guide the process of treatment. You can see that I have two unfavorable factors (p.13) – “B symptoms” and “bulky disease,” but no others. The relevant page deals with Stage 2B Bulky Disease (p.7). I am likely to receive two additional chemotherapy treatments – since I have had 10 so far, that makes a total of 12. Once that’s over, I will most likely receive IFR. Debate dorks note: this is Involved Field Radiation, not an Integral Fast Reactor (non-debate dorks: a liquid sodium-cooled nuclear reactor that is supposed to reduce waste and proliferation risks). I was told these treatments are usually easier to tolerate than chemo. The radiation oncologists will decide about how to treat me but it will probably receive 5 15-minute treatments over 2-6 weeks, for a total of 30-36 Gy (gray unit, one gray = 100 rads).
2) One of the hematology-oncology fellows told us about a new study that suggests a rapid response to chemotherapy, indicated by an early “PET-negative” response, “was able to predict with 92-percent accuracy how effective a complete course of the chemotherapy would be. The PET scan was able to distinguish between patients who would achieve long-term control of their disease and patients whose disease would progress during treatment or immediately thereafter or would later relapse.” If you re-read my post about my February re-staging, you will see that my PET was negative. In other words, if this study is correct, there is a very good chance I will achieve “long term control” of my lymphoma.
In other news, Drake and Hen have returned to Kew Gardens.
2 months ago