Thursday, January 07, 2010

I wish there was something better to say...

but grim news today. I had a PET scan done on Monday, mostly because it was time for a follow-up, but also because I have been really short of breath and coughing. It showed that there was a lot of fluid in my left lung and dr's decided it needed to be drained asap. So I go in yesterday, Wednesday, morning to have it removed. Now, as long as I know what will be happening, procedures usually don't bother me too bad, but since this was such short notice, I didn't get a chance to read up on it. The nurse and dr both were great, and the procedure went ok, until I started coughing and couldn't get it under control, that was very scary! He had to pull the tube out before he was ready to, but still ended draining 1 whole quart and 1/2 of another of fluid! Needless to say that I can breath so much better now! Then today I had an appointment with my oncologist to get the results from Monday's scan. No good. Seems that this medicine, Ixempra, has stopped working for me just like the others have done. It's almost like my body is making itself immune to the chemos as fast as it can. On the last scan results, my liver was making progress and actually shrinking back to the size it should be, but this scan showed that it was doing right the opposite and starting to swell again. The tumor in my chest wall had went from shrinking down to 3cm to growing to 10cm. The chest tumor is what was allowing to the fluid to gather, and the dr said that it looked liked I would be having it tapped and drained quite often in the future, but thankfully there is a procedure that can be done to prevent this, you can read all about it here I have an appointment 1/13 to consult with the dr that will be doing this and hopefully get a date set up. As for what comes next, both my oncologists are trying to find a facility that are running clinical trials that I can get into. They are leaning toward DUKE right now, but there are still other options.