Hi Lillian,
Haven't
been on this list all that long. Am on two others that tend to keep me
pretty busy, so have been lurking here. Time to "come out" I
guess.
I have
non-small cell lung cancer, adenocarcinoma, stage IIIA. Dx'd
3/99. Had surgery for removal of the primary lesion 4/7/99 at MD
Anderson (Garrett Walsh, Surgeon and WONDERFUL!) They took the upper
two sections of the upper left lobe. They found mets to two lymph
nodes when they went in, so that "upped" me to IIIA. Surgery
was followed by five weeks of radiation. No chemo since, with surgery
to remove it, there was no tumor to follow and no way to measure
effectiveness. I completed radiation Houston on 6/14 and came home to
Nevada (60 miles east of Reno).
I also
have severe COPD -- seriously enough that they weren't going to operate at
first. Then they ran pulmonary function tests on me and I knocked
their socks off. Despite my severely reduced lung function, my
exercise tolerance in their testing was 90% of what would be predicted for
someone with normal lung function. That made me an immediate surgical
candidate. I'm so glad that I had been exercising RELIGIOUSLY -- an
hour a day -- on the treadmill at the time I got the cancer Dx! And I
am a fanatic about the benefits of exercise.
I was
back on the treadmill the day after I was discharged from the
hospital. I asked the surgeon for a referral to rehab following
surgery and was shocked to learn that they had no such thing for thoracic
patients at MD Anderson. (That's about to change!)
The
radiation oncologist told me I might exercise through the first couple of
weeks of radiation but there was NO WAY I would be exercising beyond
that. WRONG! I had very minimal side effects with the radiation
-- just a bit of a sore throat for maybe 2-3 days. Exercised every day
through radiation. By the end, the docs told me after what they'd seen
with me I'd made believers of them. They're now instituting a
pulmonary rehab unit at MD Anderson!!
At one
point in my Internet wanderings I found a study they'd done in Europe
on hospitalized chemo patients. Half the group was randomized to
exercise for 30 minutes a day on an ergonometer (pedal machine) in
bed. The other half got no exercise. To a patient, those who got
the exercise suffered fewer, or no, side effects and almost no mood
alteration with the drugs while the non-exercising group had the usual side
effects and mood alterations. Their firm conclusion was that we
needed to look at exercise for cancer patients much more
seriously.
I had
some adjusting to do when I came home to 4000' from sea level in Houston,
and they'd told me it was an experiment to send me to altitude. I seem
to be doing fine although scarring from the radiation will reduce lung
function some over the next few months, and I won't know until November or
so whether I can stay here at this altitude. In the meantime, I'm
going everything I can to enhance lung function and offset the effects of
the radiation.
Sorry
this is so long, and maybe that's probably more than you wanted to
hear. But I'm now "out of the closet" and will keep my posts
shorter and to the point in the future!!
Hugs,
Mary --
NV
Thanks Mary: What stage lung cancer do you
have? How long have you been with us quiet as a little
mouse? Is your onc. at MD ANDERSON? Are you going to go into
this trial? Thank you so much for speaking out, your friend,
lillian
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, July 30, 1999
7:38 AM
Subject: Re: [MOL] Tests called
near on turmor-starvomg drug!
The trial I'm
aware of at MD Anderson is being planned by Dr. Roy Herbst and is
for lung cancer. That's about as much as I know. He's my
medical oncologist and mentioned it to me when I was there last
week.
Mary -- NV
Mary, thank you so much for letting us know
about the trial. It came just in the nick of time, I have
a friend leaving for MD Anderson today and this is exactly the
animunition she needed. How can I ever thank you enough
and by the way, welcome to our wonderful forum. Your
friend, lillian
MD Anderson
is also in the planning stages for an endostatin trial --
Probably November.
Mary
