It's Friday, October 5 and time for CT scans to see what affect the chemo has had after two doses. The CT goes pretty smoothly (besides having to drink TWO containers of that ghastly, chalky contrast material), so now it's just a wait until Wednesday when I'll find out the results.
Wednesday, October 10 comes and time for another appointment with Dr. Wendy. Whoops! No one told me she was out of town, so I'm meeting with another oncologist. Now, I feel like I'm the teacher and not the patient.
This doctor has never known anyone that's used Adcetris and wants me to fill her in on all of its subtleties and complexities. Wow!
After being grilled for about twenty minutes, she tells me the chemo is having some affect on the cancer, but she can't really say how much. It almost seems like she's so interested in hearing about Adcetris that she doesn't have time to tell me about how much it's helping. Oh well. I can get my own printout and read about the CT results.
Time for my third dose of chemo. While I'm waiting, I read the CT results.
In one place, it says that the largest tumor shrank from 37mm in length to 27mm in length. That's not a bad reduction. But I'm confused because the summary statement says that the same tumor shrank from 30mm to 27mm. That's not very much at all. Which one is accurate? The width shrunk only from 20mm to 16mm, so it's probably the second measurement. And none of the other tumors showed any reductions. Crud!
So which part of this treatment will "exceed all expectations"? If it's not the side effects and it's not the number of doses I'll need, what is it? I'm banking on that this chemo will keep the cancer away longer then the other treatments have. Okay. I can live with that!
When I go back the next day for my Neulasta shot, Paula (one of the nurses that's been there through all three of the past occurrences with me) looks up the original PET scan for me to see what size it reported. The largest tumor was 38mm x 20mm, so the reduction is better than I originally thought. 38-37mm down to 27mm is about a 25% reduction. Not bad. Just not gone yet and lots more doses to look forward to.
Comme si, comme ca.
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