Stability
No matter what my friends think, Dr G says I'm stable ...
Yesterday's scans showed stable disease. I have no new lesions, one of the smaller tumors went from 2 cm to 1.5 cm in width, and now the 2 largest tumors contain necrotic tissue with a thin layer of active cancer cells at the margins.
Is tumor necrosis good? As with everything else there are at least two schools of thought on this: First, necrosis is good because the cancer cells are dead. Second, necrosis is bad because the active cancer cells will begin looking for new territory. Personally, I lean toward "necrosis is good." And with the advent of antiangiogenic drugs, perhaps the opportunities to move into new territory will be reduced. Who knows?
We're still weighing the idea of increasing my Nexavar dosage from half-dose to five-eighths. Dr G would like to have seen more shrinkage, of course, but he was happy with stable disease status. We'll see in September how things are going on the half-dose, and may at that time move up. The hard part is to balance benefits with side effects. Right now I have so few side effects that it's not hard to think of increasing the dosage, but once side effects start kicking in it's more critical to see benefit to offset the discomfort.
For now, though, stability is good!
Yesterday's scans showed stable disease. I have no new lesions, one of the smaller tumors went from 2 cm to 1.5 cm in width, and now the 2 largest tumors contain necrotic tissue with a thin layer of active cancer cells at the margins.
Is tumor necrosis good? As with everything else there are at least two schools of thought on this: First, necrosis is good because the cancer cells are dead. Second, necrosis is bad because the active cancer cells will begin looking for new territory. Personally, I lean toward "necrosis is good." And with the advent of antiangiogenic drugs, perhaps the opportunities to move into new territory will be reduced. Who knows?
We're still weighing the idea of increasing my Nexavar dosage from half-dose to five-eighths. Dr G would like to have seen more shrinkage, of course, but he was happy with stable disease status. We'll see in September how things are going on the half-dose, and may at that time move up. The hard part is to balance benefits with side effects. Right now I have so few side effects that it's not hard to think of increasing the dosage, but once side effects start kicking in it's more critical to see benefit to offset the discomfort.
For now, though, stability is good!
posted by rcclive at
10:03 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home