Treatment plan change

Hi, friends. First, my adorable kids:

Next, the short update with some difficult news: 

We got scan results Thursday, and unfortunately the tumors grew. This means the chemo isn't effective enough to stick with this treatment. So we are facing either high dose in-patient chemo or surgery and will decide Wed the 30th after input from the tumor board. This is obviously hard to take, but we are managing okay and grateful we have a team of doctors to help us figure out the best plan.

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For those who want more medical details, here they are:

After 2 cycles of gemcitabine/docetaxel chemo (6 weeks), the two tumors in my pelvis each grew 1-1.5 cms. While the chemo may have made some difference (ie, things could have been worse), my doctor said it does not make sense to continue with this treatment. 

The two primary options are:

1) high dose inpatient chemo called AIM (doxorubicin, ifosfamide, and mesna). This is a very aggressive treatment and can be cardio toxic so you can only take a certain number of cycles in your life. But the hope would be that doing 6 rounds (5 days in the hospital and then a 2 week break each round) would knock the cancer out, ensure it doesn't spread elsewhere, etc. 

2) surgery to remove the tumors. One of them is close to my bowel, and if the chemo does not have an effect we risk it getting bigger and becoming more compromising. The challenge with surgery is it delays the more systemic treatment, and based on previous experience, more tumors could come back in the time between surgery and chemo. 

Radiation could also be an option after surgery (goal to zap any microscopic cells). And I could still do chemo after surgery, but if there is no evidence of disease we don't know if the chemo is having an impact. 

We will make the decision Wed or Thurs and either start chemo April 4 or get surgery that week.

So that's where we are. Gem/tax is the first line of treatment for uLMS because it has up to a 50% response rate. It's hard to know that one didn't work for me. But at least we still have other options. I will let you all know next week what the new plan is.

And I'll end with more pics of my cute kids:

Love to everyone. Appreciate all the support so much more than I can say.

xoxox,

Molly