Another MD Perspective

Yesterday morning we met with Dr. Dormady, my current oncologist. We basically decided to do 3 months of a relatively mild chemotherapy... nothing like I was doing before. I will be getting Avastin and Xeloda. I have had these drugs before but in combination with heavy-hitter drugs. I shouldn't experience the side effects from these two like I had before. I'm told I shouldn't expect nausea, fatigue, neuropathy. I'll know more when we get started, which is planned for Monday June 18th. After three months we'll do another set of scans to see what effect the drugs are having on these tumors. Also we'll continue to get CEA blood tests.

Last week I sent an email to my previous oncologist (Dr. Chen) to update her on my happenings and ask her how she would be handling this. She called me and we spoke for a while. I told her during that conversation that the doctor who ordered the CT scan up at Stanford hasn't gone over the CT findings with me and does not intend to do so. She asked me to get her the newest CT scan report and also to bring her the CD of CT scan images from Stanford. Yesterday when she left work she stopped by one of the local imaging centers (where I had my last PET scan done) and reviewed both sets of images with a radiologist there. After she called me again last night (from her home, mind you) I felt much better. Here's what she had to say:

She said I have two very small tumors currently. They are both on my left side. One is in the same area of my surgery last year. One is in my "iliac chain" which I believe is a chain of lymph nodes in the pelvic region. The one that is in my abdominal area is the larger one of the two but is very small. The one in my pelvic region is smaller still. As a matter of fact, it's so small that it's easy to miss on the CT scan. Only when they compare the PET scan and the CT scan do they realize that it's there. Dr. Chen feels like these have been there a while and are growing very slowly and right now they aren't threatening anything. When I read the scan reports they also mention other suspicious lesions that need to be watched but they aren't calling them tumors yet.

After she and I spoke I felt much better about things.

We are still planning to confer with the docs at UCSF. I am expecting a phone call today to schedule that appointment. I honestly expect to hear the same stuff but I owe it to myself to hear it anyway and confirm that the plan is a good one.