Wednesday 28 September 2011

Prognosis

We had a meeting with H's consultant today: for the first time H asked about her prognosis.  She asked because we've been planning some home improvements and H is thinking about how the building timetable might interact with her disease timetable.

The consultant was willing to be frank, but not specific.  She says that she thinks over the next two or three months Caelyx will become less effective in inhibiting progression.  In due course she'll switch H onto Paclitaxel. And when that stops working, she'll try Pazopanib.  At some point nothing will work.

Meanwhile the consultant thinks it better to treat H with as much Caelyx as she can tolerate than to ease up for surgery on the lung metastasis.  Additionally the surgeon she consulted is concerned that there may be adhesions resulting from radiotherapy that would make it more difficult to remove the tumour.  Radiofrequency ablation is another option, but again the consultant would prefer not to risk delaying chemotherapy.  Her recommendation is that we not worry about the lung met for now: she's more concerned about suppressing further metastases.

Meanwhile, H thinks the injection she had to her neck has improved her arm a bit, but not as much as she'd like.  She wants the neurosurgeon to give further consideration to microdiscectomy.

H talked to her GP about her sore toenail.  He's willing to cut some of it off, but concerned that it may take months to heal.

My guess is that she'll accept her consultant's treatment recommendation.  And leave her toe alone.  And we'll go ahead with the building work.

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