Andrew has been recovering slowly from the 2nd round of ICE. He needed several transfusions of platelets and one transfusion of RBC's, which were handled by Dr. W here, near home. On Friday, his platelets were still very low, and I knew that meant Monday's treatment would be delayed. Monday, I talked to Dr. Z's nurse at MSK, and she told us that Dr. Z wanted to see Andrew today for a bone marrow biopsy. Andrew was not happy, to put it mildly -- bone marrow biopsies are his least favorite procedure!! But he got on the train like a good cancer patient and headed into the city. I was unable to join him as the short notice made it impossible with the kids' schedules. Dr. Z ended up deciding against the biopsy (hooray!), but told Andrew he would be admitted immediately to start chemo -- what?! His platelets are still low (though much better), but Dr. Z said he didn't want to wait any longer and give the cancer a chance to grow again.
"We've been talking about you a lot" he said. Gulp. Much better to be the patient they don't need to talk about a lot, isn't it? The tumor board has been poring over his case and his very stubborn cancer. They initially wanted to do the bone marrow biopsy to see if they were dealing with 2 very different types of cancer, but eventually decided that it was most likely not so. Instead of continuing the ICE or the IVAC regimens discussed earlier, the group and Dr. Z decided to give Andrew a 96-hour continuous infusion called EPOCH. This is a cocktail often used for very stubborn cancers that have developed chemo resistance. Studies have shown that a continuous infusion at low concentrations can sometimes be more effective than brief, high dose infusions for chemo resistant cancers. The plan is to get the 4-day EPOCH (that just sounds so weird -- a 4-day epoch), get another PET, and if necessary do another 4-day EPOCH cycle.
Has anyone ever had as much chemo as my husband?! Lordy. Hopefully, the EPOCH does the trick and we move onto transplant!
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