Round 1 Abraxane and Neupogen shots completed

Round 1 of the Abraxane is complete.  The combination of Anakinra (the trial drug which also effects the immune system) and the Abraxane took a major toll on my immune system.  I was forced to take three days of Neupogen shots to force my bones to make more white blood cells.  It was rough, but I made it through.

Chemo #3 Completed

It's 3:44 am Tuesday morning and I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd post about today's treatment.  I'm still on the trial and giving myself shots every day.  I'm starting to get local allergic reactions every time I do it now.  They say it's OK to continue and not a big deal.  They advised me to use some benedryl creme if it bothered me.

First Treatment Abraxane

This first chemo took me a few days to recuperate from.  Today is the first day I've really been up moving around or doing much of anything other than what I absolutely had to do.  The chemo really wiped me out and I had some ongoing stomach pain that is a combination of the treatment side effects, liver metastasis and bone metastasis in my ribs.

Doing my research

I've been doing my research as usual and found a nice college level video by a person who worked at Genentech for many years before she came back to teach and experiment.  This video is from 2007 and just gives the basics, but it goes into why blocking the inflammatory response can block cancer growth and metastasis.  If you can get through the parts that seem a little high level and hang in there, she tends to go back and sort of summarize after she gets past all the charts and details and it seemed to catch me up if I got lost or thought I wasn't following well.  I guess I'll be researching what process Anakinra uses to suppress inflammation this weekend for sure.