Meeting with doctor at Tampere University Hospital

On Tuesday we met up with a doctor at the hospital. The doctor was really good to talk to and he patiently replied to our questions. Guess I have to admit that my wife was the one who was mainly asking and she had a long list of questions prepared beforehand.

We asked if surgery of the rectal tumour would be a logical step but he said that for that I would have to take a break from the chemo at least a month before surgery and a month after surgery, so at the moment it is more important to try to shrink the tumours. They are still considering adding Avastin to the medication maybe next round or the round after that.

We have been wondering why my treatment is called "standard" as most rectal cancer patients are over 60 years old, would I (younger, in good health otherwise) not be able to tolerate something even "stronger"? The doctor replied it is standard because it is the most efficient treatment available at the moment. There is another antibody treatment in addition to Avastin in test phase at the moment but not used for treating patients in Tampere University Hospital (TAYS) yet. Avastin is a bevacizumab drug, the new one is called panitumumab.

The doctor mentioned that calling a cancer incurable means that even though chemo would make all tumours disappear, they are very likely to reoccur. Despite that, even the option of making all tumours disappear for a while sounded really good.

The blood tests that were taken on Monday did not measure cancer markers so we don't know yet how the chemo is working, they were just checking I was in ok condition to start the second round of treatment, but most of the other values (liver values, blood values) that they did check had anyhow improved slightly which sounded good. They will check the cancer markers and take another CT scan probably after three rounds of treatment.

The doctor stressed again it is important not to lose weight, because he said the cancer tumours will always get their nourishment from nearby tissues but if I will lose weight the rest of the body will have less energy in use.