hopie wrote:so mom got her first mri after 4 rounds of chemo (folfox, 3 with avastin).
in her pet scan before chemo, she had 4 liver lesions. now i think she has 3? (no mention in the report about a 4th one)
one has shrunk, one stable, one slightly larger, but the increase is in line with treatment related necrosis.
Sounds like she has some response to Folfox-Avastin. That's good. But the curative issue is to get to surgery before too much chemo damage or Folfox's exhaustion. I still think immunochemo has advantages at some point before too much chemo, until surgery. Also, many of the ADAPT cases had major responses in their own right, which is great because ADAPT seems likely to be extendable with other goodies too (a Xeloda vs UFT question).
For surgery, bypass the oncologist(s) and lesser surgeons. Identify options, including those with multiple steps. We shrugged off the nay sayers. "inoperable" is often in the eye of the beholder, largely based on
their personal skill or in house capabilities. A radiologist volunteered that surgery was really the only way out for my wife, so no backsliding. We self referred ourselves to interview better, more specialized surgeons at other hospitals, and prepared merits and references why my wife was resectable
. We made it clear, that we preferred surgery to more chemo or radiation as our studied choice.
The new surgeons interviewed were based on the friend network, or cold calling from looking at the internet. Our best referral came from a family of drs, a girlfriend of my wife. Our second best came from cold calling to interview the head of surgery at one of the better international class of hospitals, out of 4-6 international class hospitals on the list. Our final choice was the head of surgery at the most prominent hospital, who accepted our results with interest.
...she said these reports don’t mean anything good or bad, just that they help us choose drugs.
The oncologist seems to assume she owns your mom, in the chemo trap. I got tired of that in one month of oncology interviews. We don't like parochial answers, and we're gone.