When cancer misbehaves....

Well writing this entry is a bit of a bugger( to put it mildly) as I had hoped today would bring me some positive news to share with you. Unfortunately to quote my oncologist, the results from my MRI on Wednesday are "not the greatest", as we seem to have hit a bit of a bump in the road... Initially my tumour responded very well to Temozolomide (my type of chemotherapy), as many of you will recall, at my midway MRI (between cycles 3&4), the tumour had shown a dramatic reduction, and things were looking very good, and all was set for me to continue to improve over the following three cycles, and perhaps even have an extra two for luck! However the latest MRI showed that there was no significant improvement on the main tumour since last time, and in fact one of the other cancer cell clusters had actually grown by 4mm. Now 4mm doesn't sound a lot, but it does indicate that this particular type of treatment has stopped working. This isn't as uncommon as you'd hope. Cancer cells are quite clever and devious; sometimes if someone has been taking a certain form of chemo for a while, the cells can build a tolerance to it, and work out ways to get round it and continue their destruction of your brain tissue (as if cancer hadn't done enough to annoy me!), so when this happens a bit of a rethink about treatment has to occur. So first things first. My oncologist is stopping the Temozolomide. There is no point continuing monthly cycles of a drug that has ceased to work ( bit of a no-brainer really). So that stops. Before any more treatment is considered, Dr R is giving me a two month break. The reasons for this are clear: ALL forms of chemotherapy attack your blood cells; each cycle knocks your count down, and then it rises again. If you have too much chemo all at once, it can be harder for your blood to repair itself and your platelets will drop leaving you weaker and less resiliant to infection and illness. It can also lead to problems with the blood's ability to clot, making bruises more likely. Also each cycle has already made me more and more tired and has exacerbated my exsisting arthritic problems, so time out from treatment is very welcome. Plus on a possibly more trivial note; having a break will leave me free to relax and enjoy my birthday which fall during this year's jubilee celebrations! As for what happens in July, it depends on the next MRI. If it shows little change, but I feel okay, then we might wait and just keep an eye on it, if it get's bigger or I get really sick we'll work out a treatment plan, and if ( would be great, but unlikely) it gets smaller without treatment, we all breath a sigh of relief and stop worrying! In all honesty, it is most likely, that at some point I will need some form of chemotherapy again, but as yet I do not know what form that will be; there are hundreds of types of chemo drugs,and I don't know enough about them to even hazzard a guess. So there you have it, not the greatest news, but it doesn't mean the show's over yet, there are lots of treatments, and I've known from the start, that there was a chance that this could happen, I'll just keep trying until we find the one that works! Until then I have every intention of enjoying my chemo-free months and not really worrying about it until I have to!