Do you remember this TV cop show from 1967 ? Dragnet. Let's all chant the theme - Duumm Da Dum Dum. The beginning of each show they would say "These are actual events" and in the show they would always ask for "Just the facts."
I want to give just the facts of the actual events of my cancer treatments. I will start with the events since February. So here is the time line of our adventure. February 10th I began coughing up blood after playing hockey. February 12th we first saw the lung tumour on a chest xray. Dr. Miller (GP) called it a mass, a possible fungal growth. He referred us to Dr. Fera, a lung specialist who did a bronchoscopy and took photos. I have copies if you would like to see a tumour up close, just remind me next time you are over. Dr. Fera saw in me more than a lung infection so he referred us to Dr. Finlay, a thoracic surgeon who was to cut this thing out of me along with half or whole of my lung. A date was set, Monday March 5th. The surgery never happened because Dr. Finlay discovered from a CT scan that there were spots on my liver. He scheduled me for a liver biopsy. With the results in, Dr. Finlay confirmed I had cancer and referred us to the BCCA. On Thursday March 22 we met our oncologist, Dr. Ho. She had the initial job of telling Jody and I that the type of cancer I had was non small cell carcinoma in the 4th stage. Which means it was not curable but treatable cancer. This was a seriously crappy day. I did realize that something needed to be done and there wasn't time for whining. March 30 was the CT scan that revealed 3 brain tumours. Still yet, another crappy day. The upcoming chemo was put on hold and we were moved over to the radiation department of the BCCA. We met Dr. Grafton who set me up for 5 treatments to the brain. Once radiation treatments were completed we waited two weeks before we started the weekly chemotherapy of carboplatin and gemcitabine. April 14 was head shave day for me and my boys and a couple of neighbours, Kayla cut hers short. After one round the chemotherapy was interupted by the lung bleed of April 20. This was followed by 5 radiation treatments to the lung. A CT scan on May 25th revealed that the tumours were growing even during chemotherapy. June 2, I was given a three day course of I.V. antibiotics to treat an infection in my arm. (Probably from an I.V.) June 11, a bone scan showed no cancer in my bones. FIRST GOOD NEWS since February! We started the chemo trial of Pemetrexed (kills cancer cells) and Cetuximab (prevents cancer cell reproduction) on June 20. The rash of August began on the 1st. This slid into the pneumonia of '07 which I haven't totally kicked yet. The results of a CT scan from Sept 7 showed the lung tumour smaller, the brain tumours were undetectable and the liver tumours were .5cm smaller or as they said, stable. The next CT is on October 26 - I hope this good news continues. On October 17, I finished the Pemetrexed part of the trial. By November our "Trials" nurse and Dr. Ho, our oncologist will be on maternity leave. They have both been wonderfully supportive and very knowledgable. We will miss them both and hope we will have a good connection with their replacements. The side effects continue. I want to keep this rash under control. Please pray for the side effects to lessen and that we will have a healthy winter without the flu bug. I expect to be getting weekly chemo treatments of Cetuximab indefinatly as long as I am benefitting from it. These are just the facts of actual events.
