I have been on a chemo break for four months now. Yesterday I had a CT scan, and today we saw
my oncologist. The scan showed
essentially no growth in one area and a small amount in another. Dr. Camidge recommended not returning to
chemo now, and I readily agreed. We’ll
wait three months between CT scans this time instead of the usual two.
That’s the good news for today, but we had a good discussion
of the course of my disease, and what follows is a summary for any who might be
interested. No one was expecting
mesothelioma in May, 2010 when the surgeon went in to do a thoracoscopic
procedure to end the pleural infusion in my right lung. When they found cancer, I went through a
battery of tests to determine if I was a candidate for an extrapleural pneumonectomy—the
removal of my lung—which had the potential of providing a cure. I qualified, and when they went in, they
found cancer in the sack around the heart and decided not to remove the lung. Instead, they removed the lining of the
chest cavity, the pleura, and removed as much of the cancer as they could. One of my surgeons was very experienced with
mesothelioma and must have done a very good job of getting out as much of the
cancer as possible because I am still alive three years later.
It seems that my tumors are slow growing, not what I had
expected from what I had read about the aggressive nature of mesothelioma. It also appears that the chemo I’ve had has
been effective in keeping it in check, but the researcher in me wonders how
quickly it would have grown without the chemo given the slow growth during my
chemo breaks. In summary, it appears
that relatively early detection, my generally good health, the skill of the
surgeons, and the chemotherapy have combined to keep my cancer from growing too
rapidly. When I was diagnosed it was my
goal to be in the long tail of the mortality curve (see the article by Stephen
Jay Gould to the right), and so far, so good.
