chemo -- only three more to go! (hopefully)
This week's chemo was business as usual, other than my Aunt Martha accompanied me on the trip since my parents were on vacation this week (unintentional conflict there -- the hospital stay pushed everything back a week, but I told my parents I'd be fine without them and they should just go enjoy their planned time off).
I had a CAT Scan last Friday, which showed that the chest mass is still shrinking. When I was diagnosed in November, it was 9x9 cm, when I was in the hospital a few weeks ago it was 4x2 cm, and now it's down to the size of a quarter. My oncologist says I'll have another scan after the 6th cycle (two sessions = 1 cycle = about 1 month). Here's the somewhat confusing part: if it shrinks significantly further, like to the size of a dime, we'll continue with another cycle of chemo. If it only shrinks a little bit, like to the size of a Canadian quarter, we'll just go on to the radiation therapy. That is to say, if the chemo is still shrinking the mass (dime size), we'll do more so it can continue doing its thing. But if it has run its course and isn't really doing anything more (Canadian quarter), we might as well stop the chemo and go to the radiation. Just for comparison, most Hodgkin's cases are treated with 6 cycles.
He also informed me that whatever caused my hospital stay has completely cleared up, and since they haven't been treating me for any infection and it's still gone, this would lend credence to it being bleomycin toxicity. So obviously, the good news there is that we probably made the right choice to discontinue the bleo, and we caught the problem early and it appears to be gone.
The fatigue seemed to hit earlier this time; I was really tired Wednesday night, and not too bad Thursday morning (I even went to work for a few hours, but ran out of steam and came home to take a nap). The eating thing is almost more annoying than the fatigue. Yesterday, I had a bagel for breakfast, applesauce and popcorn for lunch, then my brother brought over pizza for dinner so I didn't have to cook, which was cool -- I just wish I could've tasted it. I'm feeling better today as far as appetite goes, and I think I hear Li'l Chet's chicken calling my name from Convenient, so I'll wrap up this post and go have lunch now.
2 Comments:
I've been wondering, why is it they don't remove the tumor? Especially if it's now small. Is it inaccessible or would it cause other damage to remove it?
Glad to know that the chemo is doing it's job though. Go drugs go. :)
Dixie
I don't really have a specific answer, but a few things I've read basically said it's better to avoid the complications and risks of surgery with Hodgkin's. One website I read said sometimes they'll do surgery if the lymphoma exists in places besides lymph nodes ("extranodal"). It also said surgery doesn't prevent tumor regrowth, so I guess that would be the main reason, if that's true.
Another website says, "typical tumor removal surgery is not possible with lymphomas because the 'tumor' is not solid, but is dispersed widely through the body." Hmm... widely dispersed?
All I know is, everything I've read says when there's a large mass in the chest, the treatment is chemo and radiation, but they never really say why that's the preferred method.
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