Yeah, I know, we promised a longer post earlier. We've been busy. And lazy. "Blazy?" Call the Webster people, we might have new word here.
So, two weeks ago, Cheryl went in for her endoscopy, and as previously mentioned, the photos that came back definitely won't go in the scrapbook. I can see keeping sonograms, but these were just a big bowl of ugly, including one very large mass towards the entrance to the duodenum, which, in the spirit of belittling the cancer (and just being a good Simpsons reference), we now call "Bitey."
Stupid Bitey. We hate Bitey.
When we saw Dr. Crocenzi the next week, he didn't have the results from the PET scan (we had to get it done the day before in Portland, as for some inexplicable reason, Blue Cross will no longer cover this procedure as done by Gritman Hospital in Moscow; insert your own Idaho joke here), but we did bring along the tummy pics, and it was rather apparent that the IL-2 treatment wasn't doing it's job anymore. This, apparently, is not that uncommon with the IL-2 treatment; it'll work for a while, but then the tumors come back. Still, we did see a positive result for a while, and this bodes well for future treatments.
Dr. Crocenzi outlined three courses of treatment for us:
Plan B: This is a clinical trial that involves filtering out all of Cheryl's white blood cells in a process called leukophorysis, then re-injecting them later with a drug that has a genetic marker attached which should attack the surface of the cancer cells - in essence, it's a "reboot" of the immune system. However, this only works in people who have a specific positive antigen in their system; like blood types, you're either negative or positive, and it's pretty much a coin flip if you have it or not.
Plan C: This is another clinical trial that involves giving Cheryl a drug called imipimab or something oddly pronounced like that, which is a form of stem cell therapy. Yet another reason to vote Democrat this fall, if'n you ask me. Due to the nature of these clinical trials, if Cheryl undergoes Plan C, she couldn't do B if C doesn't work, but if she undergoes B first, she'd still be eligible for C if B doesn't work.
Confused yet?
Plan D: This is standard chemotherapy, which involves a few drugs that might be mildly effective at slowing the growth of tumors, but shows little promise as a cure. Along with IL-2, this is the only FDA approved course of treatment for this type of cancer. To us, this really isn't an option at this time.
The bright side of clinical trials is that this is really cutting edge stuff that's shown enough promise in small mammals that they're testing it on large mammals (that's us). The down side is that, well, even if you see dramatic short-term gains, they have no idea as to what kind of long-term effect you'll see. Some of these treatments are less than a year old, so there's no data yet on how patients are five, ten, twenty years down the road.
Nonetheless, we'll happily be guinea pigs at this point in time.
So, we're hoping that Cheryl has the positive antigen to undergo Plan B, if not, then Plan C it is. Chris Fountain, the nurse who is charge of organizing much of the clinical trials at the Oregon Cancer Clinic, was very excited about some of the future trials coming down the pipe, including the hyper-oxygenation treatment that some INB readers pointed out to us a few months ago - I thought it'd be years before it made it to the U.S., but apprarently it's only months away. So, as previously mentioned, in a few months we'll have options E, F, G and maybe H available to us.
We did give Chris a hard time when he said, "This is really an exciting time to be a cancer patient," to which Cheryl replied, "No it's not!" We kid, we kid. Sorry Chris! He is very excited, though, about the various treatments coming down the pipe.
After our meeting with Dr. Crocenzi, we were in a reasonably good mood, since we'd had the weekend to steel ourselves for bad news. We spent some money at Powell's, then visited Cheryl's folks for a while, drove over to spend Valentine's Day with my folks in Bend, then had a weekend to ourselves at Baker City. I had much fun skiing at Anthony Lakes, Cheryl, not so much - a combination of lack of conditioning and not skiing much over the past three years made for a not-fun time for her (next time, she decided, she'll get some remedial lessons to relearn how to make right turns). Sweet merciful God, though, I am sick of long-distance driving these days.
Cheryl had to fly back to Portland last Tuesday to get another CT scan; apparently, they weren't able to get a good measurement on her tumors the last go around, and they needed the radiologist present to be sure they got exactly what they needed. And a collective "blergh" was issued forth. So she hasn't been feeling too good the past few days, probably a combination of travel stress and all that ooky radioactive iodine they pumped into her. So ooky, in fact, she could barely play with our new Wii.
That's the news from INB HQ. We will hopefully hear back from the OCC regarding what our next course of action is in the next few days, and we'll keep you updated when that happens.
Dave
So, two weeks ago, Cheryl went in for her endoscopy, and as previously mentioned, the photos that came back definitely won't go in the scrapbook. I can see keeping sonograms, but these were just a big bowl of ugly, including one very large mass towards the entrance to the duodenum, which, in the spirit of belittling the cancer (and just being a good Simpsons reference), we now call "Bitey."
Stupid Bitey. We hate Bitey.
When we saw Dr. Crocenzi the next week, he didn't have the results from the PET scan (we had to get it done the day before in Portland, as for some inexplicable reason, Blue Cross will no longer cover this procedure as done by Gritman Hospital in Moscow; insert your own Idaho joke here), but we did bring along the tummy pics, and it was rather apparent that the IL-2 treatment wasn't doing it's job anymore. This, apparently, is not that uncommon with the IL-2 treatment; it'll work for a while, but then the tumors come back. Still, we did see a positive result for a while, and this bodes well for future treatments.
Dr. Crocenzi outlined three courses of treatment for us:
Plan B: This is a clinical trial that involves filtering out all of Cheryl's white blood cells in a process called leukophorysis, then re-injecting them later with a drug that has a genetic marker attached which should attack the surface of the cancer cells - in essence, it's a "reboot" of the immune system. However, this only works in people who have a specific positive antigen in their system; like blood types, you're either negative or positive, and it's pretty much a coin flip if you have it or not.
Plan C: This is another clinical trial that involves giving Cheryl a drug called imipimab or something oddly pronounced like that, which is a form of stem cell therapy. Yet another reason to vote Democrat this fall, if'n you ask me. Due to the nature of these clinical trials, if Cheryl undergoes Plan C, she couldn't do B if C doesn't work, but if she undergoes B first, she'd still be eligible for C if B doesn't work.
Confused yet?
Plan D: This is standard chemotherapy, which involves a few drugs that might be mildly effective at slowing the growth of tumors, but shows little promise as a cure. Along with IL-2, this is the only FDA approved course of treatment for this type of cancer. To us, this really isn't an option at this time.
The bright side of clinical trials is that this is really cutting edge stuff that's shown enough promise in small mammals that they're testing it on large mammals (that's us). The down side is that, well, even if you see dramatic short-term gains, they have no idea as to what kind of long-term effect you'll see. Some of these treatments are less than a year old, so there's no data yet on how patients are five, ten, twenty years down the road.
Nonetheless, we'll happily be guinea pigs at this point in time.
So, we're hoping that Cheryl has the positive antigen to undergo Plan B, if not, then Plan C it is. Chris Fountain, the nurse who is charge of organizing much of the clinical trials at the Oregon Cancer Clinic, was very excited about some of the future trials coming down the pipe, including the hyper-oxygenation treatment that some INB readers pointed out to us a few months ago - I thought it'd be years before it made it to the U.S., but apprarently it's only months away. So, as previously mentioned, in a few months we'll have options E, F, G and maybe H available to us.
We did give Chris a hard time when he said, "This is really an exciting time to be a cancer patient," to which Cheryl replied, "No it's not!" We kid, we kid. Sorry Chris! He is very excited, though, about the various treatments coming down the pipe.
After our meeting with Dr. Crocenzi, we were in a reasonably good mood, since we'd had the weekend to steel ourselves for bad news. We spent some money at Powell's, then visited Cheryl's folks for a while, drove over to spend Valentine's Day with my folks in Bend, then had a weekend to ourselves at Baker City. I had much fun skiing at Anthony Lakes, Cheryl, not so much - a combination of lack of conditioning and not skiing much over the past three years made for a not-fun time for her (next time, she decided, she'll get some remedial lessons to relearn how to make right turns). Sweet merciful God, though, I am sick of long-distance driving these days.
Cheryl had to fly back to Portland last Tuesday to get another CT scan; apparently, they weren't able to get a good measurement on her tumors the last go around, and they needed the radiologist present to be sure they got exactly what they needed. And a collective "blergh" was issued forth. So she hasn't been feeling too good the past few days, probably a combination of travel stress and all that ooky radioactive iodine they pumped into her. So ooky, in fact, she could barely play with our new Wii.
That's the news from INB HQ. We will hopefully hear back from the OCC regarding what our next course of action is in the next few days, and we'll keep you updated when that happens.
Dave
6 comments:
May Plan B be your backfall to break “bitsy” so you both can bag being “blazy” but rather lazy or even bacchanalianly.
"bitsy" should have been "bitey" but I was busy being beligerent because Blue Cross belittled your benig beggar. Maybe being in Bend and Baker City will behave your blood cells. This bodes well to avoid the "blergh."
My unbelievable blunder "beligerent" should be belligerent.
Yvonne, you've got some typing issues this evening :) Regardless, I agreee with the sentiment, no matter howyou spell it.
Cheryl
And I second Yvonne on all of that.
And I just noticed that sentence has not one single second letter of the alpha_et.
In case you bashful bohemians forgot to bother book-confirming “bacchanalianly”
In a bacchanalian manner. Of or like bacchanals or the Bacchanalis. Noisily drunken or drunken state; carousing.
Bacchanalia n. pl. in classical antiquity, feasts in honor of Bacchus, the god of wine, which were celebrated in spring and autumn, with games and shows.
Bacchanalian n. a drunken carouser.
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