Tumors on the Run!

My trip to Houston last week was not much fun as I still had (and have) a stinking cold and cough.  I was so afraid that I was going to have a coughing fit while on the scanner that I took a Lorazepam (anti-anxiety) along with a hefty swig of cough medicine right before, and no, I didn't tell them.  The scan showed that the liver tumors had not shrunk but had "a great response with significant necrosis despite the stable size of the liver mets", which sounds pretty darn good to me.  Other than that, the existing lung and lymph nodes had only grown by a relatively small amount and one or two new lesions had popped up.  So not bad, not bad at all.

Did I mention that I have been having strange random abdominal pains, apparently these were caused by inflammation of my spleen and my gall bladder, presumably, irritated by the radiation from the spheres.  That seems to be calming down a bit now, but I still get quite a bad pain on my right side under the ribs.  This is apparently the result of an embolism (blood clot) that is blocking one of my hepatic arteries.  My local doc and I both think that was from the incident where the stitch in my femoral artery gave way after four hours, but Dr Eng says that because of this I have to stay on the twice daily shots of Lovenox for at least three months when I had been about to go to just one shot a day

Dr Eng at MDA and my local oncologist both agreed that I should try Vectibix next, and given that Dr Eng knows how I feel about my precious "between time" and being able to make short visits to friends she worked out a dose that I could safely take every three weeks - I was thrilled!  My local doc said I would be lucky if they could get approval for three weeks and two was more likely.  Unfortunately, my insurance company (Medicare) totally nixed the Vectibix and suggested weekly doses of Erbitux instead.  That threw me into a depression as every single infusion I have had of anything has been followed by two to three days of diarrhea, nausea and vomiting not to mention the fatigue, so under that schedule I would get maybe three or four days a week of feeling marginally okay - maybe.  Of course I asked my doctor's office to appeal but we have settled for Erbitux every two weeks in the meantime.  Really, this is just a place holder while we wait for Dr Eng's new clinical trial to get under way in a couple of months.

Has anyone here gone through a course of Erbitux?  I know to stay out of the sun and to expect the face, head and chest rash so it will look like I have acne, but heck, I was lucky, I didn't have acne during my teen years and think I can probably deal with it a lot better now.  I've just never heard of any Erbitux "success" stories, it seems that its one of those chemos that you just take for a few months until the side effects get too bad or it just doesn't work any more.

And what's with these celebrities who kept their cancer secret and worked right up until 2 or 3 days before they died?  When my Dad died from pancreatic cancer he was in a semi coma for the last couple of weeks and had been confined to bed for about a month - he certainly wouldn't have been capable of swanning off to Paris like Joan (Jackie?) Collins or writing his final songs like David Bowie.  Maybe that's where the fame and fortune comes in, maybe they can afford better drugs, cocaine and morphine cocktail? yes - I'm being facetious.

So, Friday starts the next stage, the Erbitux.  We'll see how that goes

Carol