Cycle #15: General Update

One month ago I completed Cycle #15 and there are several things that I should discuss.

First, my leg. Overall I feel pretty good but 2 weeks after my last cycle, my left femur fractured. I was simply crossing the street, took a step, and heard a sound similar to a branch breaking on a cold day. The next thing I knew, my leg buckled, I fell, and I found myself laying on the sidewalk. I called an ambulance, went to the hospital, and to make a long story short, my leg was broken and I got surgery. There is a lesion, high in my femur, that had grown large enough to compromise the integrity of the entire bone. I knew about it and we had planned to radiate it, but I guess it was more serious than the X-ray suggested. In the surgery the lesion was not removed, rather, a nail was added to re-connect the femur and it seems to be healing alright. I am currently undergoing radiation to treat the lesion.

Second, CVD. Just after Cycle #13 we did CT scans to assess the success of the chemo. The latest scans showed slight disease worsening in a couple of areas but generally everything else looked the same. My oncologist seems to think that the cancer may have started becoming resistant to the chemo since there was no improvement, per se. It's a tough call as in some ways no change is a positive if the alternative is rapidly deteriorating health. The surgery and ensuing radiation is forcing a 2.5 month break from the CVD and in a few weeks we're going to do more CTs. If I am stable I will probably continue on CVD but if there is significant worsening, then CVD has run its course and we're onto the next.

Third, what is "next"? In two days I am meeting with the director of clinical trials at my hospital. She will let me know which, if any, trials are being run that could work for pheos/paras and that I am eligible for (these two things, of course, are unfortunately not always the same). I will know more after I meet with her. If there are no "new" options, then Sutent, Octreo, and MIBG, are my options. I may actually have already reached the lifetime limit of MIBG, I'm not sure, so I'll need to check on that one.

Sorry for the delay, but such is life.