Update and Upcoming Stuff

I just wanted to post a quick update on what is going on currently and what is coming up.  I spent the weekend in bed and am still on a liquid/soft food diet.  I stayed on pain meds and ibuprofen all weekend.

Today I'm back to work, so no pain meds.  We've had a lot of calls this morning because of people being out and my throat is getting sore from talking.  According to what I've read and been told, the radiation is still in effect in my body for 2 weeks after the final treatment (Friday) and it takes 4-6 weeks for the damage to heal completely.  So I'm probably looking at a few more weeks of this.

Quick Update

Today has been rather hectic between working and doctor's visits, radiation, and cancer group tonight, so I'm going to keep it brief tonight because I haven't had time to do any research to really say much more anyhow.

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