Carla,
So nice of you to ask...here's the latest.....
As you might recall my onc. in the HMO has recommended 4 courses of
Carboplatin and Taxol, over a period of 12 weeks,...administered every 21
days on an outpatient basis... I got a second opinion yesterday from the top
lung cancer med. onc. at UCSF, and without telling him anything about what
was recommended at the HMO, he recommended the same thing. Both doctors
said it is a tough call, and that a lot of people would recommend not doing
anything. But they think these drugs are very effective and that they will
improve my chances. I REALLY liked this doctor..he was so easy to talk to
and spent 2 hours with me, answering all my "stupid" questions. He was very
impressed with how well i'd researched the subject, which pleased me...
He feels that the other more experimental treatments I uncovered through
Medline searches and whatnot..monoclonal antibodies, transfer factor,
interleukin 2, adoptive immunotherapy, etc. are too immature in their
development, at least for lung cancer, to do me any good at this point.
He did recommend a PET scan for me, because he was a little concerned with
how they had done the staging of my disease.they sampled only the enlarged
mediastinal nodes, and didn't do a formal harvest of the nodes....the
implications are that there may be lymph nodes that they didn't sample that
they should have, in the mediastinum, and a PET scan would identify if any
of those are cancerous. If that turns out to be the case, radiation in that
area might be indicated...
I asked him about taking estrogen, since I have been taking it for the last
couple years...He says some adenocarcinoma tumors have estrogen receptors
and some don't. He recommends that the HMO do an assay on the tumor tissue
to determine this, and if mine has estrogen receptors, then I should cease
taking the estrogen. (Arggh...I hope not...)
I go back to the onc. at the HMO on Monday, and will try to get them to pay
for the PET scan and the pathology assay...and will schedule the start of
the chemo. I don't want to wait and get more opinions..if there were more
options to choose from I would get more opinions, but I want to get started
with chemo. I believe there is a thought that after surgery, tumor cells
are more active and I'd like to start the chemo while the "tumor load" (I
think that's the phrase I've heard) is relatively low...
So.............what about you?? Where are you in your decisionmaking process??
And, happy new year, in any case!!
Torie
At 12:45 AM 12/31/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Torrie my friend, I am looking for an update on you. I saw where you
responded to Shirley about the drugs that her mom was taking and said they
are the ones recommended for you. I think they are now recommending these
for me too. Torrie, what all has brought you to the point whereby you will
go through the treatments? I am still researching whether or not this is
the right approach. Please send me all of the details Torrie. I trust in
your determination and the work that you do to help in your own treatment
decisions.
>
>I miss talking with you and hope that now that the holiday madness season
is almost over we will have some time to catch up. God Bless you..... Carla
><!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
><HTML>
><HEAD>
>
><META content=text/html;charset=iso-8859-1 http-equiv=Content-Type>
><META content='"MSHTML 4.71.1712.3"' name=GENERATOR>
></HEAD>
><BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
><DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2>Torrie my friend, I am looking for an
update on
>you. I saw where you responded to Shirley about the drugs that her
mom was
>taking and said they are the ones recommended for you. I think they are
>now recommending these for me too. Torrie, what all has brought you
to the
>point whereby you will go through the treatments? I am still researching
>whether or not this is the right approach. Please send me all of the
>details Torrie. I trust in your determination and the work that you
do to
>help in your own treatment decisions. </FONT></DIV>
><DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2></FONT> </DIV>
><DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2>I miss talking with you and hope that now that
>the holiday madness season is almost over we will have some time to catch
>up. God Bless you.....
>Carla</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>
>
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