Ready Set Go

Okay, time for me to fasten my spiritual safety belt and get ready for my roller coaster summer. The scan I had last week shows that not only is the cancer still growing in my bone and liver, but also has spread to some distant nodes, so chemo is back in my future. As the radiology Oncologist said, it wouldn’t make sense to do the liver sit spheres procedure if the rest of the metastasis went unchecked.

So I have an appointment Friday with my regular oncologist to go over chemo options that might work. There aren’t many chemos that I haven’t already done, so he is thinking of a combo of some sort, possibly Adriamyacin and Navelbine. However, Adriamyacin has a lift-time limit, and I believe I have already had more than half. So we will decide this Friday, and probably start the following week.

At the same time, I am still proceeding with the liver procedure. I received a call today to schedule the first step, which is an angiogram? They insert a catheter into the Artery in the groin (as that is the one that goes to the liver) and inject a dye. After the tracer travels trough the artery to the liver, they take images, to make certain there isn’t much overflow to other organs and to create a “road map” for the sir spheres (to directly radiate the liver tumors). Supposedly the only pain is inserting and removing the catheter and is done with just light sedation. I’ll let you know after J

The actual procedure has not yet been approved, however, doing this initial part now will let us schedule the procedure asap after insurance approval. I was informed that the sir sphere procedure, when the liver mets are breast cancer, is initially declined by all insurance companies. However, the hospital personnel assured me that they have a 99% approval on appeal. So it is mostly a matter of time, and making sure I am a candidate for the procedure, which the angiogram next week will tell.

I think I mentioned in another post, that the Radiology Oncologist wants to do the liver procedure twice, once for each lobe (right and left liver lobes). The second procedure would be about 4 weeks after the first. I am imagining they would do the worst side first, but actually don’t know. We will also have to try to schedule it around the chemo or vice versa, so this should be interesting.

Surprisingly, I am taking everything pretty calmly. Can’t say how I will feel when I am in the throws of it, but hopefully I will be able to write about it. I must say that my newfound spiritual calm is making a huge difference in anxiety level. The hope is that throwing everything at the cancer at once, for a relatively short time, might give me a year or so of remission or at least stability. Only God knows. I pray for patience and strength, and the knowledge to know what God wants.