Treatment-Bring It On!

Today, Mom had two doctor's appointments: the surgeon, Dr. Pratt and her soon to be oncologist, Dr Bagai. The visit to see Dr. Pratt was to see how she is recovering from her surgery, which was 4 weeks ago yesterday. She is healing really well, I think better than they thought that she would be. Mom's range of motion is very good, which means that she is doing her exercises. The healing well is good news! Dr. Pratt also walked us through the Octotype DX test results. The results showed that Mom's tumor showed a higher risk of recurrance. Out of a range of 1-100, Mom's result was a 42. This is considered a high risk of cancer coming back in the next 10 years (even with being on a hormone treatment). Mom's risk would be 30% that the cancer could return in any part of her body. The test also checks to see if chemotherapy is a viable solution. In Mom's case it would decrease her recurrance rate to 6-10%. Dr. Pratt released mom from her care and only wants to see her as a follow up in 6 months.

The next appointment was with Dr. Bagai, mom's oncologist. This was a consultation and decision making meeting. Dr. Bagai asked mom many questions about her health, how the tumor was found and how she was feeling. Then he walked through the oncotype DX test results. He basically said the same thing that Dr. Pratt said. But, he said that he was more concerned because the test also showed that mom's tumor, although small (1.5 cm) was considered agressive. She is also Estrogen receptor positive, Progesterone negative and her she is negative for a protein called HER2. All of these are factors in what treatment she is going to have. Dr. Bagai wants to be agressive with Mom's treatment. He walked through 2 options. The first option was with a mixture of 3 drugs in a 20 week treatment. This treatment would contain Adriamycin, Cytoxan and Taxol. The doctor told us of the risks with this and his worry because of mom's other health concerns-high blood pressure, diabetes, and a heart stint. The second option was a 2 drug mixture in a 12 week treatment. This treatment would contain Cytoxan and taxotere. Mom opted for this treatment. Once this was decided, the next steps moved forward very quickly. The doctor did a quick exam of the surgery site and then every started in motion. he wanted to start the treatment next week. The nurse, Cindy, told us the next steps. We are meeting with Cindy on Thursday afternoon to do a walk through of everything that she would be going through with her treatment (just like we did with Paula before the mastectomy). Mom starts her chemotherapy Thursday, March 4th at 9:00with blood tests and then the start up of therapy.

Our new world, for the next 4 months will consist of white blood counts, red blood counts and side effects. Let's get through this and get going with making sure that cancer is out of Mom's body and not coming back!