Last week I had my first infusion of Avastin, the chemo drug that my doctors hope will help minimize the dead cells left over from radiation and possibly slow or stop the growth of my tumor. The infusion only took about 30 minutes and I have had no side effects. Luckily, I only have to have one infusion every 15 days, for 6-8 weeks, so my schedule is definitely manageable. I think the plan is to have another PET scan and MRI after the 6-8 weeks to see if it is working.
A good friend of mine from high school, Grace, has been asking some of her medical colleagues in NYC if they know of any brain tumor studies and she has gotten me the names of the heads of the brain tumor centers at both Columbia and Cornell! With all of the treatments I've already had, it is unlikely that I will qualify for any "conventional" studies, but one of the doctors said they could review my history and try to think "outside the box". My dilemma at this point is how do I get my VAST amounts of medical records from Kaiser and UCSF to these folks?!? At least now I have a job to do for the next week or two, rather than binge watching Netflix shows :)
That's it for now :) I happily don't expect to have anything exciting to report for a few weeks. I don't want to keep bombarding your inboxes with depressing brain tumor news. I'm going to try to post here more often, so if you're curious about how my treatments are progressing, please check back here. I'll likely just send an email if something big happens. So, in my case, no news is probably good news :)
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2 comments:
Laurie, I read every word you write. Thanks for posting this for us and I check your blog often. The link is on my desk top and you are in my heart and prayers.
Judy B.
Hugs too!
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