Steady as she goes

Living with cancer often entails an unexpected and demanding commitment. No one tells you that it can transform into a full-time occupation that revolves around researching the condition, acquiring knowledge about available treatments, engaging with fellow patients, participating in webinars to stay informed about the latest advancements, and managing numerous appointments and calls with medical experts.

In the past month, I have reached out to several other institutions to get 2nd/3rd opinions. From my local Memorial, Cleveland clinics to the north Florida centers of Moffitt, Mayo, and further out to MD Anderson in Texas and City of Hope in Los Angeles. It’s a blessing that I can still retain information and explain my case clearly to oncologists and surgeons even though I do have moments of brain fog. Each call made, each webinar attended, and each opinion sought represents a courageous stride towards my own empowerment, and informed decision-making.

The need of having to go into so much depth of research and the networking within the medical community also sheds light on the gaps and challenges within the healthcare system that we as patients still struggle with, especially with gastric cancer community.

Regarding my current state, I completed four rounds of FLOFOX and did a CT scan to see how things were looking. That CT scan showed that my lymph nodes have significantly improved (gotten smaller) so therefore I am about to begin my next four rounds of chemo (Round 6-8th). CT scans showed a bit of thickening of my stomach which tends to occur and with Signet Ring Cell but at the same time, SRC is very difficult to be seen on imaging.

We also had to pause on Immunotherapy Opdivo on round 4, as my liver enzymes ended up climbing to high grade that might start to cause a bit of damage. In a way to calm the inflammation and rising numbers, I have been placed on Prednisone, and have had to do multiple blood labs to keep an eye on things. After 7 days its finally slowing come back down.

During this time also I had two MRI’s as well to check up on other things that my CT scan had mentioned. My pelvis and breasts, had shown some concerns, but in the end I got clean scans! So much gratitude.

I also was able to do Next-generation sequencing testing for mutational analysis (Caris) that showed that I am expressing Claudin 18.2 protein, at 90%. This will open up some target therapy that hopefully soon will be approved by the FDA, in the meantime I will be searching for clinical trails.

Steady as she goes….