sclc w s.v.c.s.

fava

Hi my 57 year old mother just died 5/9 after 18 months of batteling small cell w/svcs. her quality of life was excellant until 3/15 then she slowly fell apart, the Dr. was right on target when he said a few weeks to a couple of months, she exhausted 3 different types of chemo and did 30 rounds of radiation when she was diagnosed in 9/00, her first chemo gave her the best results, I believe it was vp16 and paxilataxil? it took her til 1/01 to complete everything looked good til 7/01 and then it showed it was active again, then she took topotecan and was to have a ct scan after 3 treatments and one day was having what turned out to be a major panic attack, anyways when we took her to the hospital to see what was up they did a ct scan it was sooner than scheduled, good thing, we found out the topotecan wasnt working at all so we then started gemzar at the end of Sept/01 and her first ct scan there after showed it wasnt smaller but it wasnt bigger either so we continued. In 2/02 showed it was growing again, he told us we could do nothing if she wanted, try another chemo if she wanted and if it worked it would work briefly or he let her try her clinical trial drug she wanted to take(thalidomide) when trying to decide on a clinical trial drug its so hard to choose which on you want.......you cant try them all at the same time, anyways this was the one we came up with I dont think its the one the Dr. would have picked for her but it's the one she decided on, due to the fact my aunt was researching, I guess its in trials for the non small cell lung cancer, and I dont even know if it is for sclc but they gave it to her for compasionate usage anyways, I would hope for the best results for everyone in the treatments you are doing, but if you were really wanting to put up a fight research clinical trials and see whats out there incase you do exhaust all treatments the antiangiogenesis research looks very promising the treatments there trying to do have something to do with starving the tumors so they dont have any nourishment, cutting off blood supply to them, ya know when my mom first began and she was getting radiation and being she had svcs( something for you to look up) her whole throat and chest felt like she was being microwaved from the inside out she couldnt eat or swallow much.......total liquids we got a juice machine and were making healthy drinks apple, beet carrot and stuff and then I read that eating real healthy when doing chemo and taking vitamins wasnt good!! that then your rescuing your cancer? go figure so I guess you cant win so we let the chemo beat her up (fatigue) and then we ate well after, she never threw up ever from chemo she'd get waves of nausea like when your pregnant, but never threw up....she was a smoker, she stopped immediatley but she was also a pot smoker which she didnt give up til march when she started her decline she had no desire to smoke it.... all of her pain meds to keep her comfy and her clinical trial drug and anti anxiety meds on a liquid diet made her throw up and she got Zofran which I highly recommend for nausea it worked instantly like a heart patient with a nitro pill, that stuff's the best she thought if she had felt well enough to smoke pot she wouldnt throw up but she had gotton congested in the end weeks and was off the chemo and said why bother she just got short of breath nothing horrible or scarry and she went to sleep and didnt wake up I called the hospice lady who was coming by a few times to replenish meds and check on her an she told me she wasnt gonna wake up and she had a few minutes to a few hours, and she went about twenty minutes later I hated to see her go she was my best friend I took a leave of absence from my job for 2 months to be with her around the clock out an addition on my house for her to be in and I dont regret taking care of her at times I'd wonder if it would get to be more than I could handle but it never did because I loved her.
I will continue to read your posts as for I know a couple of you have the sclc with the svcs also so I will continue to read to see how you are doing, take care and god bless all of you and your familys