Well, it is official - THE CANCER IS PISSED! and I say GOOD!! (It's a big jerk in my book anyway) We didn't get a letter from it or anything, but it is making its feelings known by the pain it is causing dad. Apparently the concensus is that the radiation is making the cancer "mad", so one of the side effects dad is feeling is pain. Hopefully it will pass like most of the symptoms of the chemo did. He starts getting pain about 1 1/2 hours after his treatment. He said it was really bad last night - and if he says its bad it must be horrible. So, point for dad - he pissed it off!
Now for the Oncology appointment summary....
He was given paperwork/consent form for the clinical trial. It explains all possible side effects and such. I found it interesting that there is 4-5 pages of possible side effects and two sentences about the possible benefits..."may shrink cancerous tumors". So below I posted a link about the trial, but basically it is this:
It is a trial to test is the drug Centuximab (Erbitux) will do more in combination with the chemo drugs Docetaxel or Pemetrexed. Centuximad has already shown promise with colon, head & neck cancer; now they want to know if it will help shrink tumors of late stage lung cancer. What that drug basically does is attack a "marker" on the surface of the cancel to prevent it from reproducing. The way it works as dad's name is placed into a "lotttery" with others and a computer randomly chooses who gets only the chemo drug and who gets the combination of the new drug & chemo.
If he is chosen for the combo, he will have the chemo drug every 3 weeks and the other every one week. If not, just the chemo drug every 3 weeks. He said "so I will be a statistic" but we agreed he is a statistic anyway. I just hopes he looks very closely at all the information and makes an informed desicion. No matter what I will support him and I hope you will all too.
link to trial info:
http://www.cancer.gov/search/ViewClinicalTrials.aspx?cdrid=405843&protocolsearchid=3017043&version=patient
He will also start a steroid called Decadron to help with pain, he is hesitant about raising dosage of his patch until the radiation is done. (but I am glad he is doing something because I don't like seeing him in pain)
He had to have the med today for his hemo - it was a little low.
So, that is all I know for now. Everyone stay warm & stay home tomorrow if you can!
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