No surgery, more chemo - updated

Updated: At my chemo appointment yesterday Dr Lupickuck (chemo doc) stopped by to see how things were going. We had a good discussion about the options and I'm pretty happy about the way things are going. Carrying on with a full 6 month course of chemo will hopefully wipe out any existing microscopic disease floating around my body looking for a place to happen. Knowing now that the lung nodules are unlikely to spread it means that surgery can happen months or years down the road once (or if) they grow to a size that Dr. Gelfand can feel with his hand. In my discussion with Dr. Lupichuck we also decided to add the chemo drug Bevacizumab which acts to slow the growth of new blood vessels. Since in most metastatic cancers blood vessels grow quickly, using this drug can slow (but not stop, alas) the growth of existing tumors. I think its a good move. It doesn't have any minor side effects, only major ones like the possibility of a pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis. Good times. It feels good knowing that if I'm hurting, the cancer must be hurting even worse. It also feels good to be doing something about it. Sitting around in denial or just waiting things out is not fun. You can't sit in bed with your eyes closed if the house is on fire and just hope it goes away, you gotta save what you can and run.

It turns out Dr Gelfand isn't confident in the ability of interventional radiology to accurately place coils in my lung at the site of the tumors. That means 3 more months of chemo then monitoring my CEA levels (a tumor marker in my blood) and CT scans every 3 months knowing the tumors in my lung will probably grow back. Its not ideal to say the least. Lupichuck had a bit of good news though. She said that the cancer is highly unlikely to spread from the tumors in my lung. Any new spots that show up will likely be due to spread of microscopic disease from the primary tumor.

I can't say I'm looking forward to doing more chemo tomorrow. It sucks. Big time.