Greetings everyone,
Feeling guilty cause I haven't checked in for quite some time. Saw this role call and thought, great idea!
Originally diagnosed Feb. 97, stage IIB. ER less than 10% pos. 5/36 nodes pos. Had 3 cycles of A/C followed by high dose chemo with stem cell rescue, then 6 weeks radiation.
June 2001 CA 15-3 48.2 so waited a month then repeated markers. I was totally out to lunch at this time and didn't follow up with tests assuming no news was good news. Finally called for results and found markers nearly at 80! Took forever to get scans and didn't actually get started on treatment until 9/27/01! By that time my markers were off the charts and I had mets throughout my liver. Did almost 8 months of Taxotere and Herceptin at which time mets had all but disappeared. Decided to have liver resection in November 2002 to remove remaining spot, because I could not continue on with anymore chemo.
Markers started rising again in April 2003, so this time I wasn't going to fart around and started Xeloda as a preventative, even though we didn't see anything on scans. Had a severe reaction to Xeloda that landed me in the hospital . My body couldn't metabolize the drug and it built to toxic levels and almost killed me. Was almost like going through the stem cell procedure again! Anyway maybe it was a blessing in disguise, because I have been NED ever since!
In Dec I finished the Her2 Vaccine Trial at the U. of Washington and so far everything is going well.
I am still getting my Herceptin every 3 weeks and I watch my Tumor markers closely. My CA 15-3 seems to hover around 18-21.
I certainly don't feel like stage 4 and have even decided to take up endurance riding!
My Prayers and best wishes to all of you, Kim in CA.
P.S. If I can ever answer questions for any of you please feel free to email me.
kckhud@sonic.net