This new leg of the cancer 'journey' has been somewhat of a thrill ride. Today Madison was formally accepted in to the trial and will start the dosing tomorrow Tuesday. Hallelujah : - )
Wait, so what's dosing?! It's swallowing a pill. They don't say she'll take a pill, but she will be given a 'dose'.... sounds so medical, aye?! All kidding aside, it is considered a chemo pill and side effects should be minimal, summarized at the bottom of this post.
Next steps: Still in San Francisco for a couple of more days, EKG and bloodwork will be taken tomorrow morning as a baseline measurement. She'll be given a 'dose' and monitored throughout the day. At the six hour mark, they'll take more blood and do another EKG. Assuming everything is tolerated well, a second dose (pill) will be administered (swallowed).
If all goes as planned she'll leave SF with 13 more days of meds (a cycle is 14 days). Day 15, back up to San Francisco to take new baseline measurements, rinse and repeat every two weeks. On week-eight there will be new MRIs and CTs to determine how effective this new med obliterating the rogue lung metastasis, more here.
So how long she have to take these meds? Hopefully, indefinitely... let's expand on that. In a perfect world modern medicine would have a pill that can cure cancer. Here and now there are promising targeted agents that can help reduce tumor size and activity, but nothing (yet) that can forever change her body to erase this type of cancer once the bugger metastasizes.
Taking this med indefinitely would imply it's forever effective, we can hope! However if the effectiveness of a med diminishes at some point in the future, cancer patients play 'kick-the-can' as mentioned in a thread here.
Wait, so what's dosing?! It's swallowing a pill. They don't say she'll take a pill, but she will be given a 'dose'.... sounds so medical, aye?! All kidding aside, it is considered a chemo pill and side effects should be minimal, summarized at the bottom of this post.
Next steps: Still in San Francisco for a couple of more days, EKG and bloodwork will be taken tomorrow morning as a baseline measurement. She'll be given a 'dose' and monitored throughout the day. At the six hour mark, they'll take more blood and do another EKG. Assuming everything is tolerated well, a second dose (pill) will be administered (swallowed).
If all goes as planned she'll leave SF with 13 more days of meds (a cycle is 14 days). Day 15, back up to San Francisco to take new baseline measurements, rinse and repeat every two weeks. On week-eight there will be new MRIs and CTs to determine how effective this new med obliterating the rogue lung metastasis, more here.
So how long she have to take these meds? Hopefully, indefinitely... let's expand on that. In a perfect world modern medicine would have a pill that can cure cancer. Here and now there are promising targeted agents that can help reduce tumor size and activity, but nothing (yet) that can forever change her body to erase this type of cancer once the bugger metastasizes.
Taking this med indefinitely would imply it's forever effective, we can hope! However if the effectiveness of a med diminishes at some point in the future, cancer patients play 'kick-the-can' as mentioned in a thread here.
