Postby boxhill » Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:28 pm
Claudine, have you and your husband considered using one of the blood tests that detect cancer cells?
I suppose you could say that I'm Stage 4 on a chemo break, or at least a treatment break. After failing FOLFOX I started Keytruda, which brought me to semi-NED within 5-6 months. At that time I still had a tiny subcapsular liver mass that could not be definitively characterized. After about 18 mos on Keytruda with quarterly scans showing NED except for the unchanged tiny liver thing, everyone decided that the liver thing wasn't a met and that I was officially NED. (And probably had been since the previous spring.) Because I was suffering from painful arthralgia as a side effect of Keytruda, we decided to stop it and just continue to scan. No one really knows how much Keytruda is enough, but a year NED is a possibility.
So I have an MRI every three months for now. If anything changes, I'll go back on Keytruda. So it might be a break, or it might be permanent.
F, 64 at DX CRC Stage IV
3/17/18 blockage, r hemi
11 of 25 LN,5 mesentery nodes
5mm liver met
pT3 pN2b pM1
BRAF wild, KRAS G12D
dMMR, MSI-H
5/18 FOLFOX
7/18 and 11/18 CT NED
12/18 MRI 5mm liver mass, 2 LNs in porta hepatis
12/31/18 Keytruda
6/19 Multiphasic CT LNs normal, Liver stable
6/28/19 Pause Key, predisone for joint pain
7/31/19 Restart Key
9/19 CT stable
Pain: all fails but Celebrex
12/23/19 CT stable
5/20 MRI stable/NED
6/20 Stop Key
All MRIs NED