Things have changed

     Well, things have not been going in our favor. Bruce is doing well but his cancer antigen,CEA, has been climbing since the end of December  but his doctor has been unable to locate the cancer on Bruce's scans and since Dr. Percent  doesn't no where the recurrence is, it can't be treated...so we wait.

     My cancer antigen (CA 125)  on the other hand had been normal until March 30. I was working in Iowa on April 2 when I found out the results. It was really a bummer being in a hotel room alone when I read my results. What was even worse has having to go to work that night & two more nights before getting to go home. I decided then & there that I was done. I am having problems with short term memory loss & trying to work 12 hour nights & possibly not being able to sleep during the day only made it even harder to concentrate on not forgetting something plus I knew I wouldn't be able to handle chemotherapy & working. I know others do but traveling & working long hours just wouldn't have worked.

     I saw Dr. Orr on the 6th, had a PET scan on the 16th, saw Dr. Orr again on the 17th and started chemotherapy on the 22nd.  Obviously, my PET scan was abnormal. Dr. Orr didn't feel that surgery was an option...nodules were small & could be difficult to find laproscopically and an open procedure
(surgery)would delay starting chemo by 28 days. I am also right on the border of my relapse being due to my cancer being resistant to Carboplatin (one of my previous chemo drugs). Apparently if you relapse within 6 months of finishing chemotherapy with Taxol & Carboplatin your Ovarian cancer is considered resistant to Carboplatin. I relapsed at 7 months. If I would have relapsed at 9 months then my cancer would have been considered sensitive to Carboplatin & if I had relapsed at 3 months it would have been considered refractory to Carboplatin. So what that means is that I am back on Taxol & Carboplatin but am also on Avastin which is an even more scary drug then Taxol & Carboplatin. It has a lot more potentially dangerous side effects. I will be on cycles of 3 weeks...meaning each cycle is 3 weeks long with 1 week off between cycles. I will receive Taxol & Carboplatin each of the 3 weeks & will receive Avastin every other week. This coming Wednesday will be the 3rd week of Cycle 1 & I will receive all three drugs. So far no problems. I have lab drawn every Monday & chemo is every Wednesday. My lab varies.  I will be getting a repeat CA 125 & extensive lab every 4 weeks. For the other labs in each cycle I get a complete blood count & a basic metabolic panel which checks my blood sugar, electrolytes & kidney function.

     If I don't have a significant  drop in my CA 125 which is 83.8 (0.0-34.0 is normal) then we will be changing my chemo drugs even more. My next CA 125 is May 18th and hopefully won't have anything else to write about until then.