The latest news with Clinical Trial Treatment #4

Today was my 4th treatment on the clinical trial and my first CT scan since starting the trial. My results were not definitively bad or good. My scan showed that the tumor in my liver has grown. That is considered "progression" of my cancer and is reason to stop the trial since this treatment does not appear to be stopping the progression of the cancer. My doctor is currently out of town so the other doctor who is running this trial came to talk with me. Her first inclination was to not have me go through with treatment today. But then she saw that I look really good, I am still very active, I feel good, my weight is stable and other than the fact that I believe my cough is increasing, I have nothing to complain about. She understands that you can't make all decisions based on scans and numbers, but also based on how the patient is doing and feeling.

If this treatment is not working for me, then there would be an advantage to not getting treatment today because they like there to be a four week window between new treatments to give the old drugs time to get out of your system before starting a new drug regimen. But, what if this treatment, while not stopping the progression, is at least slowing it down? The doctor I spoke with was struggling to decide what to do and didn't want to make that decision for my doctor. Then she decided to check my CEA number which is a tumor marker and gives an indication as to how much the cancer is progressing. When the previous chemotherapy stopped working my CEA number got up to 25. After one treatment on this new clinical trial that number went down to 15, indicating that it was helping. Today my number was 14. When she saw that she decided to go ahead and have me get my treatment today.

I will continue to take the pills every day until my next appt. which is on Aug. 20. At that time I will be able to meet with my doctor and discuss my options. While it was known from the beginning what my plan B would be when plan A failed, it is not known at this time what plan C will be. The fact is, they don't know of any other obvious, good options for me right now. They will do some research and see what other trials are out there. It might mean going to a different hospital and starting over with a different oncology team. We just don't know.

There is the question, why are all of these decisions based on a tumor in my liver? What about my lungs? How are they doing? My liver contains an actual tumor. That can be measured very precisely and we can know how much it has grown or shrunk based on measuring its diameter. My lungs, however, do not have a tumor. The cancer is diffused throughout the lungs and it is very hard to quantify any increase or decrease accurately. Any change that has taken place has been minimal enough that it isn't very obvious how much change has taken place. Of course I can tell a huge difference between now and back in October, but as far as measuring cancer growth, my lungs are not a very good source of information.