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Hi Kath,
My treatment for the liver mets was 8 months of Taxotere and Herceptin. After 8 months I was having so many side effects that I decided to stop the Taxotere for awhile and just continue with the Herceptin. While on the Herceptin my tumor markers continued to fall and eventually reached the normal range. Follow up scans still showed a small spot on my liver, so in November of 2002 I elected to have the left side of my liver resected. It turns out that there was no cancer left in my liver, just lots of scar tissue. I also started taking Femara at the time I quit the Taxotere.
I don't know if you saw my post on the main board, but my July 12th brain MRI revealed a small tumor that I just had treated with Gamma Knife last Friday. I have been getting regular MRIs of my brain and thank goodness we found it while it was quite small and easily treatable. I never had any symptoms, so it's a good thing to do the MRIs for sure!
The Taxotere is a very tolerable drug, in fact my side affects weren't too bad until the last couple of months. It's just that I had so many mets to my liver I needed to stay on it for a long time.
Back in 2001, when I was first diagnosed with the recurrence to my liver, I was a very uninformed patient.
In June, routine blood work showed elevated tumor markers. The doctor said to wait a month then repeat the blood test. So in July I did another test and when I didn't hear anything from the Doc I figured, no news is good news. It was nearly 2 weeks before a good friend told me to call and find out for sure what the results were. Anyway, when I finally got ahold of the doctor he said that we needed to schedule scans. After a CT scan, the doctor said I had a tumor about the size of a walnut, but that he thought it might be scar tissue from an infection I had back in 97 when I had my stem cell transplant. It was too close to the main blood vessel to biopsy so he sent me for an ultrsound. They still weren't sure so next they scheduled a PET scan. Long story short, by the time we got results from the PET it showed mets throughout my liver and my tumor markers were off the charts! By the time I finally got the conclusive diagnosis it was the end of September, and thats when I started my treatment. I still get mad when I think about how how much time passed before I started my treatment and how oblivious I was.
If I had known what I know now, I would have demanded tests right away and could have attacked the mets when they were still small. I probably wouldn't have had to be on the Taxotere for nearly as long and probably wouldn't have felt like I needed the liver surgery.
Anyway, I think the Taxotere is very effective and tolerable if you don't have to be on it forever. I also had it every week, given in smaller doses which is supposed to make for fewer side effects, rather than once every 3 weeks.
Hope this is of help to you and I'm happy to share any other info you might need.
Kim
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