BillM
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Well, I have a new update!!!! My cancer is gone but I lost the left half of my liver to atrophy. Basically, the can’t get any dye in the left half for contrast. The tumor is still there but dead because the left hepatic artery is blocked. The two inch tumor is out of the mesentery and the lymph nodes and pancreas. My tumors were msi-h and responded exceptionally well to keytruda. Lucky to be alive!!!! Will be on maintenance for another year but only have to get infusions every 6 weeks. What a wild ride!
Update to where I am right now. Picture isn’t as rosy as I originally thought but I am doing well. My tumor is now a 4.5cm by 2.4 cm or a little under 2 inches by 1 inch. It shrinks by about 7 mm per cat scan which is about every 12 weeks. My main concern is the treatment ends in a year and at that rate, will still be around an inch by half an inch. It is also surrounding the left hepatic artery. My left lobe of the liver has also atrophied. Considering having surgery around 6 months before treatment is done so the keytruda can prevent and kill any cancer cells after surgery. I also survived the covid but that delayed my treatment 5 weeks. The good news is the I found out that the tumor had spread to the mesentery and the lymph nodes but my lymph nodes are back to normal and the mesentery tumor is almost undetectable on a cat scan.
I just got my sixth treatment. I am doing well. Found out my tumor’s largest dimension is just an inch now. The CAT scan was three weeks after my last treatment. If it keeps going at this rate, I should be cured in one or two more treatments. That doesn’t mean I will stop taking the keytruda if my doctor wants me to stay on it. I never want to go back to the pain and suffering I had. I would take 3 morphine pills in an hour for the pain. Luckily, I never got addicted to the morphine and haven’t taken one since March. Maybe it was the severe constipation that kept me from becoming an addict.
Just had some great news. My doctor said my tumors reduced in size by more than 50% after 4 treatments comparing my ct scan in March and the one I just got on Monday. Of the two tumors, one is gone except for some spots. The other is just a sliver. I am confused because I thought I had one hemangioma and one cancerous tumor but as far as I am concerned, it looks like one is gone and the other is at about 1/4 the original size. Since the tumor was originally 3 inches long and 1 1/2 inches in diameter at its fattest point. So basically, it is probably going to be gone by my 8th treatment if it keeps working. My doctor said I had DMMR/MSI-H and Keytruda works really well on these types of cancers. I thank God that I have a treatment that is working really well.
