fisherds

I’ve had very good luck on chemo. I was diagnosed around the same time as you were and was not a surgical candidate (mets to the diaphragm and omentum ruled it out) so chemo or nothing were my main options. I was on cisplatin and gemzar from November through April mostly 2 weeks on 1 week off on the cycles one treatment each of the on weeks. This brought my marker levels from the 100k’s to zero and I only had tiredness and low blood counts and some nausea for side-effects for the most part until close to the time we discontinued this treatment. At that time I started getting ascities and some intermittent fevers possibly from reservoirs of infection in the necrotic liver left when the tumor was killed. This treatment also reduced the tumor size to less than half the original and the mets could not longer be seen on the scans. When I had a case of Acute Spontaneous Peritonitis which put me in the hospital for a week and made my kidneys not function well for the first few days of the hospitalization.

My doctor decided that the IV chemo was hurting more than helping at that point so changed over to Xeloda which is less harsh than the IV chemo I was on and my blood numbers and fatigue improved and the tumor continued to shrink so that it was no longer visible on my scan about 2 months ago. So I went completely off chemo for two months and had a followup scan and its returned but is still small and my tumor marker is only in the low 100s so I’m restarting the Xeloda this week.

So chemo seems to be a hit and miss proposition. I know some people don’t get any effect at all but I and my doctor were surprised how well it worked on my tumors.

The chemo may give you little side effects or major and my be quite effective or completely ineffective. It seems the only way to know is to try and see what happens and stop it if it seems to be doing more harm than good.

The nausea from the chemo for me was well controlled with anti-nausea drugs (Zofran/Ondansetron with Lorazapam/Ativan) and if my blood numbers dropped too low I got transfusions and delayed the chemo treatment. The only lasting effect I had was some tingling and numb feeling in my toes that began near the time when we discontinued the IV Chemotherapy and still hasn’t come back.