Good Morning!! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday with your family or friends--although I know there are some of you that are actively struggling today due to this disease! Unfortunately, I know that is just the reality of where some of us are on this cancer journey!
I just wanted to update you on my husband's situation since he's been taking TAS-102!. He only took two cycles, got scans, and showed significant disease progression in the peritoneum, liver, and lungs--BAD NEWS!! So, of course drug was stopped a few weeks ago! Now we are looking for some other options. Unfortunately, we live in Michigan, and there just aren't as many trials available in the midwest as there are on the east or west coasts. But--we found one trial at Karmanos in Detroit, MI, that may offer us some hope! I thought I would share this information in case it might help someone else. The Phase 1 trial will be looking at the interactions between two drugs that are already FDA approved--Crizotinib and itraconazole (So the purpose of the trial is not looking at how these drugs work for patients with colon cancer). What is good for my DH is that Crizotinib is a drug that was identified via the Foundation One Report to be a possible choice to use for his colon cancer treatment, due to him having a c-MET amplifcation. Currently,it has only been FDA approved for a particular type of lung cancer. So we hope to be able to get some benefit from this drug and at the same time add to the data pool for colon cancer research. We won't find out for about 10 days whether he will be accepted into the trial.
I am also beginning to do some research on what trials are available on the west coast, since we have a son who lives in LA, CA. I'm looking into the RRx-001trials at the University of CA . I also want to find out more about where the Xilonix trials are being done at. It's been difficult to make much progress with my searches due to the holidays. It has really slowed down a lot of communication at the various sites.
We are so thankful that although the scans show significant disease progression, my DH is still staying very active and having a good QOL. The team at Karmanos are very happy to see how well he is doing; no pain; almost normal labwork; great attitude. We believe God is doing a daily miracle in his life, to keep him this strong and active, in spite of the negative information from the scans. But--we know we are running out of time and I am constantly searching for what is available to help give my DH more time--but also a good quality of life. I am a nurse, so I have been the one who is doing all of the research and studying the options. I am thankful that I can use my knowledge to help us on this journey!!!
We appreciate this forum so much!!! If you have any other ideas, or questions, please let me know!!! We are all in this together and we need to support each other the best ways that we can!!
Thankful and Hopeful,
Cindie