7th May 2006
Renea, I am glad that my mom's experience with Tarceva can be an inspiration to your husband. Elsewhere I have read posts by others that have had such success with it and are now in year two of taking it as well as some that started out on Iressa and did 2-3 yrs of it then switched to Tarceva and are still going. I even wonder if my mom's doctor should have kept her on it longer, he took her off when the liver mets began progressing yet I have seen some cases where some people did have some progression but stayed on it and added chemo to the batlle and had great next scans. Tarceva does only work for a small percent but when it does it seems like the results usually pretty outstanding.
I do not know if I mentioned in any of my pasts posts how after first line chemo of carboplatin and Taxol my mom was so weak and the doctor told her he would give her two months off for her to go enjoy herself and she asked how can I do that when I can not do anything? He just ignored that but as time went on she got weaker and weaker and with Christmas approaching we all wondered if she would be alive to see it and we all felt certain it would be her last if she did make it that long. She got so weak she could not walk more then a few steps and was very short of breath too. My mom use to have beautiful legs even in her late 70's and one day while shopping and wearing shorts an elderly man approached her and told her she had beautiful legs, well she tought it was a pick up line! A few weeks later some friends from work were looking at some photos of my mom with some puppies we helpd rescue and several of them said " wow your mom has beautiful legs!" So I do not think the old man was trying to pick up on her . Anyway her beautiful legs became sticks from muscle wasting atrophy so to take her anywhere we used a wheelchair.Yea things were looking their darkest and she looked near death. Then at a visit to her oncologist I noticed she had a low grade fever and called it to his attention, well he wanted to write it and everything else off to cancer progression . He heard crackles in her chest and said " oh she has a pleural effussion again" I insisted he check her for a urinary tract infection( UTI) and pneumonia, he finally gave in and checked for the UTI which was positive but would not order a chest Xray. We went around him ( not easy to do with Kaiser as your HMO)and contacted the pulmonary doctor she had seen a few times and convinced him to order a chest xray and sure enough she had a pneumonia, her whole right lung was whited out so he put her on better antibiotics then the oncologist had given her for the UTI and the oncologist started her on Iressa( a month later switched her to Tarceva which had just come out). She went home took her meds and by the very next day was able to walk down the hall without feeling as short of breath and everyday got better and as she walked more she got stronger and went from the brink of death back to living a quality life. It all happened so fast after starting the drugs. I was quite angry to think that they would have allowed her to die back in Dec 2004 as she probably would have become septic in another day or two. Boils ones blood to see that!
I am telling you this story to show you that even when things may look the darkest there still is hope as 2005 was a very good year for my mom despite how the end of 2004 looked. As I said before My family will always be thankful the Gentec for inventing Tarceva and I even called them to tell them this as while it may not save her life it took her from deaths door to a quality life. I really believe that in the not so far future the biological drugs will replace chemo and cancer treatment will be managed more like a chronic illness then a terminal one, lets hope I am right! I have to get to work so grab on to that Hope and I will send lots of prayes your Husbands way, Best wishes to you both, JanMarie :cool:
I do not know if I mentioned in any of my pasts posts how after first line chemo of carboplatin and Taxol my mom was so weak and the doctor told her he would give her two months off for her to go enjoy herself and she asked how can I do that when I can not do anything? He just ignored that but as time went on she got weaker and weaker and with Christmas approaching we all wondered if she would be alive to see it and we all felt certain it would be her last if she did make it that long. She got so weak she could not walk more then a few steps and was very short of breath too. My mom use to have beautiful legs even in her late 70's and one day while shopping and wearing shorts an elderly man approached her and told her she had beautiful legs, well she tought it was a pick up line! A few weeks later some friends from work were looking at some photos of my mom with some puppies we helpd rescue and several of them said " wow your mom has beautiful legs!" So I do not think the old man was trying to pick up on her . Anyway her beautiful legs became sticks from muscle wasting atrophy so to take her anywhere we used a wheelchair.Yea things were looking their darkest and she looked near death. Then at a visit to her oncologist I noticed she had a low grade fever and called it to his attention, well he wanted to write it and everything else off to cancer progression . He heard crackles in her chest and said " oh she has a pleural effussion again" I insisted he check her for a urinary tract infection( UTI) and pneumonia, he finally gave in and checked for the UTI which was positive but would not order a chest Xray. We went around him ( not easy to do with Kaiser as your HMO)and contacted the pulmonary doctor she had seen a few times and convinced him to order a chest xray and sure enough she had a pneumonia, her whole right lung was whited out so he put her on better antibiotics then the oncologist had given her for the UTI and the oncologist started her on Iressa( a month later switched her to Tarceva which had just come out). She went home took her meds and by the very next day was able to walk down the hall without feeling as short of breath and everyday got better and as she walked more she got stronger and went from the brink of death back to living a quality life. It all happened so fast after starting the drugs. I was quite angry to think that they would have allowed her to die back in Dec 2004 as she probably would have become septic in another day or two. Boils ones blood to see that!
I am telling you this story to show you that even when things may look the darkest there still is hope as 2005 was a very good year for my mom despite how the end of 2004 looked. As I said before My family will always be thankful the Gentec for inventing Tarceva and I even called them to tell them this as while it may not save her life it took her from deaths door to a quality life. I really believe that in the not so far future the biological drugs will replace chemo and cancer treatment will be managed more like a chronic illness then a terminal one, lets hope I am right! I have to get to work so grab on to that Hope and I will send lots of prayes your Husbands way, Best wishes to you both, JanMarie :cool: