A quick update.
I received my fourth round of Navelbine yesterday and I’m feeling incredibly rotten today. We’ve now confirmed that this drug is not working (at least as a single agent), so I probably will not have to put up with it much longer.
Yesterday I learned my liver tumors are too big to do the ablation procedure we had hoped (please see update on 11/7 for some corrections to this paragraph). Instead, later today I will be evaluated for a more complicated procedure called Yttrium 90 radioembolization. I will learn more about it today but the general idea is that a catheter is snaked up through the groin to one of the two blood supplies to the liver. While the liver usually gets 75% of its blood from the portal vein, when there are tumors present they often get almost all of their blood from the hepatic artery. The interventional radiologists insert radioactive beads of glass or plastic into that artery so when the tumor gets its blood supply, that supply is radiated and hopefully shrinks the tumor locally, without disruption of healthy cells in the rest of the body. Only one tumor can be treated at a time. It is not a cure, it is just palliative for these metastatic tumors to try to stabilize them or reduce them. I will also need to be off chemo for a week on either side of the procedure.
I also need to be seen tomorrow by the cardiology team at Sloan-Kettering for another opinion on my pericardial fluid situation now that I am having some symptoms and have had more imaging done. They will decide if we need surgical procedure to drain the fluid and biopsy it. It is probably malignant but we can’t be sure. If they don’t feel we need to do any intervention right now, we will watch and wait.
So, we have some big decisions to make including what chemo to go to next. I won’t go into those options here now. First I need to deal with these more pressing issues of the liver and the heart. I had hoped to be able to rest and get through these difficult post-chemo days at home but the appointments mean pushing myself beyond what I really think I’m able to do sometimes. But I have to get answers and be able to get scheduled for what I need when I am hopefully feeling a bit better next week.
Once we have some decisions made about it all I will report back. Things just don’t seem to go the easy or simple route and I’m getting used to that. For now I am going to try to conserve energy and stay pretty quiet. Thanks to you all for your continued support.
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