Chemo breaks

I also have dozens of mets in my lungs. I missed 1 treatment in July, was without chemo for a month and did the same in October. Before that I did the same in May.

I’m not sure you’d call it a holiday, but I went off maintenance in June due to sll the miserable side effects that were quality of life issues.  We started with one month off, when my hand and foot was still not resolved we went with another month off.  In the interim I had a PET in which nothing lit up.  I decided at that point to just stay off till i had a  reoccurence.  Last weeks scan showed a growth of the lung nodule as well as a hot lymph node.  Ill be starting radiation therapy in a few weeks in order to keep it at bay and keep me off chemo as long as possible.  I was told next time i go on chemo. No holidays.

im in the same boat as all of you.  Had mets to liver, requiring chemo and surgery   Then it migrated to the lung last year   Luckily its only the one lesion, but also i had 2 lymph nodes lite up previously 

This is my first go round eith radiation  hope it does the trick  

p

abita said:

Were you glad to have the

Were you glad to have the time off from chemo. My thoughts really are stop 3 or 4 weeks before my vacation then right back on. I would love to be able to get my teeth cleaned and one small surface cavity filled

I have my teeth cleaned when on chemo and had a root canal the firs time (the chemo caused an abcess).  I get an antibiotic to take an hour before the appointment as a prophylactic. 

As an aside, more as a general thought that I go by,  to the extent that there are times where we can enjoy our life a bit more with jiggling some treatments, it is worth it to me.  For instance, my 3 week intervals vs 2 week intervals.  If the difference means I will be here for one year 6 months and having 14 days out of 21 being pretty darned good or one year and 8 months, basically starting to feel okayish right before heading /going to the next treatment, I will take the one year 6 months.  Not willng to totally throw the baby out with the bathwater and take extreme risks - meaning that if 3 weeks WILL take me out in one year six months while 2 weeks will keep on working without question, then I may have a different take.

I had a scheduled chemo break of about two weeks when one of my kids was graduating from high school, which my doctor thought was totally reasonable. I also had about a one-month break when I had SBRT for lung mets. Recently, my doctor suggested a two week break to help recover from all the cetuximab side effects that were making me miserable. At first I didn't want to do that, because I'm almost done with my whole planned course of treatment, but then I realized the side effects were really causing too much pain. I don't actually know if I'm on "lifetime chemo" or not, the current plan is to stop treatment in three more weeks and then see what happens.

abita said:

Do you have any mets that can

Do you have any mets that can be seen on scan? I am realizing from the answers here that it seems they continue the chemo even if too small for scans because without surgery they grow back. I have told myself lifetime chemo so I can deal with it and am not devastated by bad news since that seems to be the thought, However, I do pray that I get a miracle. As for the chemo break, I am hoping to get an extra week of no chemo before my trip, so I don't think that is huge. I would be ecstatic if mine shrunk enough and the doctor suggested every 3 weeks instead of 2. I am overly optimistic, but I have had the rug pulled out from under me so many times, I am trying to be pragmatic as to what would make me happy. 

On my last scan back in August, the lung mets had shrunk about 50% since April, and that was after both SBRT and chemo. The radiation onc also said the view was very hazy at that point (from the SBRT), so the 50% was very approximate. I will have a new scan soon to find out what's going on with the mets now. My oncologist's plan to stop treatment for now was based on those preliminary results. I'm assuming she'd change course if we found out that things were getting bigger instead of smaller.

abita said:

I just realized that my

I just realized that my oncologist is probably so focused on keeping me on treatment because he thought I was going to quit over my hair, that maybe is why he doesn't give me a timeline for when I might not have to have chemo anymore. As devastated as I am about my hair, my will to live is very very strong, so he doesn't need to worry.

My prior scan was 6 weeks before I started the new drugs, so we don't really know how much they shrunk because we don't know how much they grew in those 6 weeks. The only thing we know is all were smaller than on that prior scan. The scan today will really show how well it is working. Honestly, as much as I hate being at less than 100 percent, I don't mind doing more rounds if it strengthens the possiblity of killing all the cancer cells. But it sure would be nice to be chemo free!

My chemo treatment was interrupted twice by infected ports,  went like this infusions, 3 weeks off, 3 infusions 8 weeks off, then 3 more infusions. Over about 7 months. Nothing grew, and I truly felt like my body was able to bounce back with the breaks and my immune system was able to recover and fight back.  My scans showed steady shrinkage of the 2 PET scan postivie lung tumors and no new growth at all--when worried about how taking a break may affect me I decided that if the cancer was so aggressive that a few weeks off were the difference than so be it. How was your reunion? Hope you had a good time!

SoCal42 said:

Mets seen on scan

On my last scan back in August, the lung mets had shrunk about 50% since April, and that was after both SBRT and chemo. The radiation onc also said the view was very hazy at that point (from the SBRT), so the 50% was very approximate. I will have a new scan soon to find out what's going on with the mets now. My oncologist's plan to stop treatment for now was based on those preliminary results. I'm assuming she'd change course if we found out that things were getting bigger instead of smaller.

So to update, I'm now on a 1-month break from chemo. The Erbitux suddenly started to cause the rash to spread to my arms, legs and abdomen, which my doctor thought was just too much. Because I had a Thanksgiving trip planned, we decided to do a break for a whole month, so I could be in better condition for my trip. Then I will complete the current chemo plan right after that, with a reduced dose of the Erbitux. I only have one more cycle of chemo planned for now, depending on the next scan.