Although the tumors hadn't spread, and there was no sign of anything on my lungs or other organs, they continued growing through the two cycles of Gem/Tax. So it's on to a new drug, temodar (temozolomide).
This is an oral agent, commonly used for brain tumors and as a radiosensitizer. Temodar's record with soft-tissue sarcoma is mixed, to say the least. The idea is that this drug's relatively long cycle (six weeks of daily doses; two weeks off) will align well with my still relatively slow-growing epithelioid sarcoma. If Temodar stabilizes the disease, I will then hopefully enroll in Ariad's trial of deforolimus, which is seen as a promising alternative to "watching and waiting."
L. and I both left marveling at Dr. S's slickness. She delivered some pretty lousy news, and she did so smoothly. The strategy was something like this: 1) get the bad out there quickly; 2) emphasize the normal or positive findings; 3) immediately lay out the revised plan, emphasizing the deforolimus carrot; 4) slip in some bad news about temodar's side effects; 5) listen to my lungs and leave.
I'll start temodar later this week, if the preapprovals go well. (They should: I was previously pre-approved for the drug, so we're not starting from scratch.) The common side-effects are nausea, constipation and fatigue, so Dr. S launches new temodar patients with Zofran, one of the heavier-duty anti-nausea drugs. Hey! I've been telling everyone that this would be easy and you write a script for serious anti-emetics! Damn you, Dr. S! Foiled again by that wily physician....
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The title of this post is honor of my younger brother, C, who used to draw out "God... Damn... It..." into a kind of mantra, angry but also rueful, dispositive but also somehow searching. I took the soul out of it by reducing it to a compact G.D.I so I could allude to the idea but not pollute the mouths of my kids any more than I already have.
Anyway, that was pretty much my reaction to the results: God. Damn. It.
1 comment:
This is uncharitable, surely wrong, but could there have been just a tinge of smugness re the fact that she always said the tumors would be sensitized to gem/tax, despite what the elite medical oncologist in the cosmopolitan state had to say?
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