Cycle #2: Day 19

Today I met with my doctors as I usually do on treatment week. This was actually the first time that I've met with my actual doctors since beginning the treatment as they were both on vacation when I had an appointment during the week of Cycle #2. From their perspective I seem to be doing significantly better than I was prior to any treatment at all. Overall, my wife and I agree with this. It is hard to be entirely objective because when I started chemo I was just over a month from a pretty big back surgery...part of me "looking and feeling better" is a result of just having had more time pass since the surgery. Despite this, though, my body is telling me that the treatment is doing something and that I am actually better off than I would be without the chemo. For Treatment #3 I think that they are going to administer the same dose as last time. They are doing so because I am tolerating it quite well and because my platelets have started to drop. I believe they are still above 50K, but not by much, and that is an overall decrease from where I started.

One of the tricky parts of a metastatic cancer, and there are many, is that tumours do not always move in lock-step with one another. For example, while someone may have disease that is generally getting better, there could always some that are worsening. This has been a problem for me in the past. While my body as a whole responds well to treatments, sometimes individual tumours become worse, requiring immediate attention (usually surgery or radiation). This may or may not be the case right now. I had a spinal and brain MRI this week and while my spine looks stable there is one spot in my brain stem where the radiologist is not sure if the disease has worsened. He has ordered a follow-up MRI in 3 weeks which will give him more information. Due to the sensitive nature of the location of this tumour, it is likely that any significant worsening would have manifested itself in physical symptoms for me. In this case the tumour is compressing the right hypoglossal nerve (the nerve that controls the tongue), which I've had problems with for years, but no real change to report.

In two days I receive treatment #3.