Monday, November 30, 2009
Radiation is officially over. Man oh man is it ever so much easier than chemo!!!! So what’s next? On Wednesday, November 18th, we met with Dr. Link to see what his next move would be. This is what he said...” I have one more thing I can try before I let nature take its course.” That one more thing is an oral chemo that is evidently a “miracle” chemo for a very specific form of leukemia and not a chemo for breast cancer. No, I don’t have leukemia but for some reason “my” cancer shows strong evidence of responding to this drug. However, like all the other regimens I’ve been on, this one also needs to be cocktailed. Oh, and this cocktail has never been used on an actual breast cancer patient before. It’s only been tested in a tube and it’s in this test tube that things looked promising for breast cancer patients like me. Do you feel like I’m just telling you the same story over and over again? I do.
So, this is what the doc wants me to do. I will take the oral chemo (Gleevec) daily and then once a week I will have the other chemo (Navalbine) administered via I.V. I will also be receiving a once a month I.V. dosage of Zometa that is supposed to help with bone healing. The first dosage of the Zometa literally put me to sleep for about 36 hours. It was weird. One of the side effects was fatigue...guess so. As it stands right now, I am scheduled to begin both treatments next Monday, a week from today. This new regimen will continue until it stops :)! Very likely it will continue for 18 weeks :/. That’s at least the best guessing we can do right now. It’s all going to depend on my body.
Crazy as it may seem, when the doctor made the “let nature take its course” comment, I was oddly relieved. I felt like saying, let’s get on with this and get it over with. I’m not being a pessimist but I feel like this new regimen will work for a bit and then my body will once again build up a resistance to the drugs making it ineffective. And I’ll be left to once again detox and try to get my body back to some sort of normal. This seems to be my new normal. At least I have hair.
I think that’s all I have to share for now. Until next time...Angela
P.S. Thanksgiving was AMAZING!!!
Radiation is officially over. Man oh man is it ever so much easier than chemo!!!! So what’s next? On Wednesday, November 18th, we met with Dr. Link to see what his next move would be. This is what he said...” I have one more thing I can try before I let nature take its course.” That one more thing is an oral chemo that is evidently a “miracle” chemo for a very specific form of leukemia and not a chemo for breast cancer. No, I don’t have leukemia but for some reason “my” cancer shows strong evidence of responding to this drug. However, like all the other regimens I’ve been on, this one also needs to be cocktailed. Oh, and this cocktail has never been used on an actual breast cancer patient before. It’s only been tested in a tube and it’s in this test tube that things looked promising for breast cancer patients like me. Do you feel like I’m just telling you the same story over and over again? I do.
So, this is what the doc wants me to do. I will take the oral chemo (Gleevec) daily and then once a week I will have the other chemo (Navalbine) administered via I.V. I will also be receiving a once a month I.V. dosage of Zometa that is supposed to help with bone healing. The first dosage of the Zometa literally put me to sleep for about 36 hours. It was weird. One of the side effects was fatigue...guess so. As it stands right now, I am scheduled to begin both treatments next Monday, a week from today. This new regimen will continue until it stops :)! Very likely it will continue for 18 weeks :/. That’s at least the best guessing we can do right now. It’s all going to depend on my body.
Crazy as it may seem, when the doctor made the “let nature take its course” comment, I was oddly relieved. I felt like saying, let’s get on with this and get it over with. I’m not being a pessimist but I feel like this new regimen will work for a bit and then my body will once again build up a resistance to the drugs making it ineffective. And I’ll be left to once again detox and try to get my body back to some sort of normal. This seems to be my new normal. At least I have hair.
I think that’s all I have to share for now. Until next time...Angela
P.S. Thanksgiving was AMAZING!!!
