[chrisy]

Well....guess I'd better check in - rather than start a new thread, I'll duck in under the radar here.

The tiebreaker CT scan, which they did last week, showed a little bit more growth - and basically confirms that this drug (at this dose at least) is not doing the job for me. Disappointing, but not surprising and of course it's good to know and move on.

The good news is, barring surprises on next week's chest CT (they only looked at the abdomen on this one - aarghh!), we are still talking about a solitary tumor and node in the liver. The bad news is that it's now about golf ball size. I've always been a lousy golfer, but hopefully we can send it packing with a good big wood. Maybe like that one Rodney Dangerfield had in Caddyshack.

The goal is (still) to shrink that sucker then whack it locally with RFA or surgery. So the new shrinkage plan is chemo (gemzar)/herceptin - or taxol/herceptin/AKT inhibitor in yet another trial.

I'm going for the trial (although it wasn't until after I signed the consent that Sheila told me gemzar wasn't hair challenging!) because although I haven't had gemzar, I did well on taxol in 2004. AND I saw some interesting data at SABCS on the AKTi's. I think there have been some molecular changes, so hitting the growth pathways at another place makes sense.

This is still a phase 1 trial, but more mature and dosing at the MTD. I'm just praying I can qualify this time (platelets still bounce around a bit, sometimes a tick below the cutoff) and that finally we can get headed in the Costanza direction.

I wish I rocked the scarf/wig thing as well as some of my friends...time to scare up some new "hair" that doesn't look like a fright wig!