CA-125 news - not good

Doctor Werner called me just now to let me know my CA-125 count had risen to 177. It was 95 in March, 102 in April, and now 177 in May. This, coupled with the slight growth on my scans is telling her the Doxcil treatment isn't working. We have to discuss a new chemo regime. It tells me we are one step further along the Death March road.

She is talking about a couple of experimental things. The first is a regime of Taxotere (which I had back in 2005) and Yondelis. Yondelis is a new concoction made from marine creatures. It's a clinical trial for recurrent ovarian cancer, so Dr. Werner will have to make sure I meet all criteria before we know if I can do it. It will cause hair loss and it takes 5 hours to get the chemo, once every three weeks.

The next option is to add Avastin to Gemcitibine. Avastin prevents new blood vessels from forming, thus starving cancer cells which need lots of blood to grow. Gemcitibine does not cause hair loss, but radically affects white blood cell counts making you really prone to infections. We will have to clear Avastin with my insurance company since it's not FDA approved for use in ovarian cancer. I despise the FDA regulations.

If I can't have Avastin, we'll just go with Gemcitibine. If it doesn't work we'll switch to Topotecan. Given that I got four months with Doxcil, if I can average four to six month on each of the other drugs, then maybe I'll make it to when they come out with the new nano-technology for drug delivery.

So the update isn't good news, but hey, we knew last October these days were coming. I've been in my yard planting ipomea seeds (real Morning Glory, not that stuff people call morning glory but is really bind weed.) I think there is no greater show of faith that I'll continue to be here than to work in my garden, plant things and wait for them to grow. I'm going back out to plant some more. Stop by and sit on my porch sometime with me. It's a lovely place of peace.