Some of you wanted to see my wound - for those of you who don't, I'll try to make this post long enough that the pics won't show up unless you scroll down.
Attitudes regarding my tumor there have changed. I went to both the chemo doc and wound clinic on Thursday.
I won't be having anymore treatments of this drug Doxil. I can feel some new bumps and growth of this bigger tumor and the doc agrees. I'm having a scan next week so we can take measurements to see how much bigger and where it's going.
The doc at the wound clinic, seeing that the wound was worse and still draining a lot, thinks that as long as the tumor is pressuring up through the skin, it won't heal over. She says that really the best she can do is try to help me keep it from getting infected.
My surgeon is out of town, so I'll see him in two weeks to get his opinion. I may be having surgery again. If it's up to me, I vote for surgery. The concerns are still the same, but I'd rather be dealing with a clean-cut surgery wound, drain bulb, and hopefully no tumor, than dealing with this raw, free-draining sore with the growing tumor behind it. I guess it depends on the scan - we want to see what tissues the tumor is invading, and how active the cancer is in surrounding lymph nodes.
Alrighty, here's some pics - yes, those are pubes in some of the pics. Grow up.
This is all the stuff I lay out before I start.
Here's the wound. It's not infected, it's just that color. There's dead tissue that sloughs off from time to time.
This is the catheter and syringe I use to irrigate the hole. The catheter is marked in centimeter increments. In some places the hole is almost 4cm deep.
Here's me poking the ribbon into the hole. You can see that this makes the hole unhappy, but it only bleeds a little.
Then I wash my hands, slap some gauze and tape over the wound, wash everything down with antiseptic, and put it away til tomorrow (or sometimes just til tonight cuz the gauze gets saturated).
There ya go. If no surgery, I'll be starting a new chemo called Gemzar. It's a fast infusion, but I'll be back on a weekly schedule with it.
A few people have asked why this drug this time, why not more of drugs that have worked in the past, are we just shooting in the dark, etc. If a particular drug doesn't work, it plain doesn't work and more of it will not make a difference. If a drug works for a while, then stops working, it's because the cancer has evolved and developed an immunity to that drug - a higher concentration will not make the drug continue to work. As for which drug, it's based on past research and treatment. The doctors chose the first chemo because it had the highest success rate for people with this type of cancer. When that chemo didn't work or stopped being effective, they went to the drugs with the second best record, then to the third, fourth, and so on. So the odds for some response to the chemo get worse as we go down the list - but there has been a response in at least some of the people treated with any of these drugs, or we wouldn't bother. We're keeping an eye out on experimental stuff, though, you never know what these guys will come up with that might work.
Cheers
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