I went in to see my local oncologist expecting to find out about, and sign off on the forms, for the Paloma-3 trial, but when I got there they had me scheduled with a PA I had never met before and he had no idea why I was even there. After I gave yet another doctor a summary of why I was there and what I was expecting, he excused himself and went and called my oncologist on the phone. He came back with a rather vague idea of what was going on and really couldn't answer any of my questions.
What it comes down to, is that I failed to qualify for the Paloma 3 trial because it is ineffective on the type of tumors I have. That's about all I got out of him regarding that. I plan to ask more questions next week when I see the oncologist.
I informed him I have been off treatment since the beginning of June and requested to know what was being recommended as the next course of treatment. I was told Abraxane. Abraxane is an IV chemo drug. It is similar to Taxol which I had at the very beginning of all of this in 2009. It was the first one I did for 12 weeks once a week and tolerated fairly well. If you'd like a refresher on how that went, here's a link to a search that will show all the articles mentioning taxol: Click here for links to previous Taxol related blog posts.
This time, I'd be doing it once a week for 3 weeks and taking 1 week off and repeating as long as it appeared to be effective. It's a 2 hour process. I'm seriously dreading it and really want to find out what made her choose this treatment over others like Afinitor which is an m-tor inhibitor that MD Anderson had suggested. I'll know more next week when I get to talk to her.
Until then, I'll be reading up on it and looking to see what all options I have. Here's the rough schedule they gave me today:
7/10 - Last day of radiation(8 down, 2 to go!)
7/11 or 7/14 - CT Scan
7/16 - Oncologist visit
I'm disappointed in your local OC doc's handling of everything.
ReplyDelete*hugs* and deep breathing exercises! :)