This
summer my family and I took a vacation in Grand Cayman for my “Make A Wish.” It was the first time my tumors and I had
ever parasailed, jet skied or snorkeled with sharks. We also swam with sting rays, did some
shopping and fishing. It was an action
packed week. Did you know that the
legal drinking age in Cayman is 18? Neither
did daddy. :)
Unfortunately,
the reason I had so much energy was that my cancer had reoccurred and these new
tumors were over-producing adrenaline. Fiddlesticks! When we returned home I had routine scans
that showed three new tumors, including one in my original tumor bed (OF WHICH
WE JUST RADIATED!)
These tumors grew really quickly considering hey they weren’t on my scans just
ten weeks ago when I last had surgery! I
started a new chemo regimen last week. It’s a 21 day cycle. At the end of July
I will have new scans to see if this chemotherapy is working. Whether or not it
is probably won’t be clear because three weeks is a short period of time, but
we need to see some stability or shrinkage ASAP at the rate these suckers are
growing.
I also have a meeting set up with a new group at Dana Farber to discuss tumor
profiling and clinical trials. Although I already tried tumor profiling at the
University of Michigan and it was unsuccessful, the tumor profiling at Dana
Farber takes a different approach and anything is worth trying. In short, tumor
profiling consists of doctors analyzing the DNA of my tumors and looking for
known gene mutations that have been seen in other cancers. This leads,
hopefully, to treatments associated with those mutations. This would point me
towards a treatment that should work instead of trying more random
chemotherapies. Clinical trials are new drugs that are being tested before they
are FDA approved. There is some promising research being done and it may make
sense for me to look at these as well. In the case of joining a clinical trial,
I would become a human guinea pig and I mean maybe some magic will happen, who
knows!
I know this is a bunch of information that sounds mainly negative but I feel
exactly the same as I did ten weeks ago, which was and is perfectly normal. I
hope everyone is having a great summer!
