Had a long day at hospital today. In the morning we (my wife joined me) were supposed to meet the same doctor we met three weeks ago, but he sent his apologies. He had something else and another doctor stepped in. We have now seen a new doctor every single time we have been at the the hospital. Anyway, the new doctor was very nice and knew my situation. We went through the usual stuff first, how I felt and about the side effects I had had during the second round. I told her about the nausea I seem to get for a couple of days and that Primperan is not helping enough so I mostly just manage to lie on the couch those days. She prescribed me new and supposedly much better anti-nausea medicines. We talked about the sore soles of my feet. They are fine now but she wanted to lower the morning dose of Xeloda.
We discussed the values of the blood test I took yesterday. We were especially excited about finding out the value of the CEA marker, but unfortunately the value was not in the system yet. It seems it takes longer time to analyse than other more usual values. All other values were good. For example, they measure the AFOS liver value every time. It should be within the range of 35 to 105 and my value has been over that since the first blood test in May. The highest value was just before I started treatments when it was 177. After that it has come down and in yesterday's blood test it was 113, almost within the range.
We discussed Avastin. The doctors have not wanted to add Avastin to the treatment as there was some blood in my stool earlier from the rectal tumour, and Avastin should not be given in that case. The drugs I have been given this far have done something to the tumor so that the bleeding has luckily stopped. The doctor said this is a positive sign and decided therefore to add Avastin to the third treatment round. So I'm now on Eloxatin, Xeloda and Avastin. She also scheduled the next CT scan in two weeks. In the CT scan they will see if the liver metastases are the same, growing, or decreasing in size.
The infusion, IV as I've learnt is used in English, took five hours this time as Avastin was added. I tried to finish Lance Armstrong's book. At half past four in the afternoon I got to leave. I left with a pretty positive feeling. At least the drugs I've got so far have had some impact.
