Update on husband's diagnosis

Bob completed his radiation and on Thursday we went back to the oncologist. He wants to give him a couple of months off..yippee!
Maybe he can get his strength built back up.
He will have a PET scan in a couple of months and will go from there.....

Bob has met his quota of PET scans covered by insurance for now (3) so he has to be put on the "PET Regisgry". Something new that I had not heard about but found a brochure about it....sure glad they have it since these things are so expensive.

Looking for a good time these couple of months.
Clara

Yes, I feel like we are doing well.

It is so good to be able to share with others and hopefully we can be of help to each other.

Hi Clara,
Thanks for checking in and letting us know how it's going. It sounds like you're doing pretty well, all the very difficult circumstances.

Sending best wishes to you and your husband.
Wendy

We visited the radiologist yesterday. Received an official report on the last PET scan, very little change which at least tells me the chemo did keep the places from getting any larger at this time.

The oncologist had indicated to the rad. that Bob was in more pain, not true except for a rib area, because he has stayed on the same dosage of pain medicine for awhile now.

Onc. had mentioned to us that rad. to the pelvic area can be tricky and that rad. would be done to some of the areas that were causing the pain. Radiologist wants to do 10 treatments to the pelvic area and also to one of the rib areas that has caused more pain. Bob felt good about this decision and will not be taking any chemo at this time.

Had a CT scan. Go back on Wed. for xray (I think) and treatments will start on Thursday, ending first week in June.

Hoping and praying that these treatments can help and give Bob some "quality" of life. He did really good last week other than getting tired easily which is to be expected.

Just wanted to give an update since this site is so helpful to me.

Clara:

Gemzar did not make my husband's tumor disappear, but for about 10 months, it made it shrink a bit. And then it stopped working and the tumor started getting larger (as shown on PET scan). Prior to Gemzar, my husband had a chemo (can't think of name but will look it up) along with carboplatin; then Gemzar alone; and then taxotere. He developed muscousitis (horrible sores in mouth, down throat) from taxotere and had to be hospitalized and fed IV.
I do not think he had cisplatin. He tolerated carboplatin well, but after the fifth or six round of anything, he wound up with a lot of fatigue; on Gemzar, he had to have neupogen shots frequently.
Overall, though, he did well on chemo, for the most part.
His tumor was in his lung (metastized from bladder), and he also had 10 radiation treatments because it made him cough up blood.
And the radiation stopped that after about the sixth treatment.
So I am hoping that a new chemo drug will offer some help to your husband.

Hi Clara,

So...the PET scan showed stable disease, that's a good thing.

As far as cisplatin, it's up there with the big boys as far as side effects, but I think it could be very different from Taxotere as they're different types of drugs.

Cisplatin causes nausea, hair loss and low blood counts. A once-a-week schedule just might be a lower dose, different than the usual protocol for its use in blc. If so, it may well be less toxic. Using lower doses more often is a novel way of treating advanced disease.

All the best,
Wendy