Rhandom Schittshowe Cancer Journey: 2024-06-20: Cross Cancer Visit, Stage
| Tip | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Name | Description | Service Provider | Cost | Notes | ||
| General Info | Breast Cancer Staging | $0.00 | |||||
| Activity | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Name | Description | Service Provider | Cost | Kms | To Date | Total | Notes | ||
| Other | Consult | Apres-\"Procedure\" Consult with Oncologist | Cross Cancer | $0.00 | 0 | |||||
| Other | Procedure | Some unnamed \"Procedure\" at the Cross. Maybe blood tests? | Cross Cancer | $0.00 | 0 | |||||
| Blog Entries | ||
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| Facebook Post\n I have decided to opt out of the remaining chemo. I will still do the Herceptin (for the HER2+ aggressive aspect of my cancer), and the hormone treatment - just forego five more chemo sessions. Now I just have to convince my onco without getting railroaded into continuing with it. According to the Predict tool the chemo only gives me an additional 2% on 15-year survival rate over skipping it and doing just the other treatments.\n \nEDIT: For context, this is not about my day in the ER yesterday. This is about them not finding mets on my bone scan or my CT scan. It's a conversation I was going to have with my oncologist when I saw him on July 4, but since I get to see him today, now, we'll have the conversation today. If they saw any evidence of mets on my scans, I would still be totally in for the chemo. I asked my oncologist, now that the CT scan results came back and showed nothing suspicious, what my Stage is. He said it's Stage 1B, which is much lower than I thought (I had thought, based on the internet, that I was Stage 3). \n Stage 1B is: The tumor is in the lymph nodes and may also be in the breast tissue. It is less than 2 cm in size. Facebook Post\n Note that D (doctor) speaks very very quickly and talks over R consistently. I offer this information to explain Rhonda’s ’slow down’ outburst. Forthwith, \"D\" will be referred to as \"Obnoxious D\".\n\n R: My CT scan results came back with nothing suspicious seen. Can we talk about dramatically reducing, or eliminating, the chemo?\n\n D: You can quit whenever you want\n\n R: This is not my area of expertise- it’s yours. Can we explore it?\n\n D: I don’t recommend quitting. This is the standard treatment that we give.\n\n R: OK but I don’t know if I want to go through this for a 2% improvement in survival. Death from cancer is not the only outcome that I would consider to be a failure of treatment (lists some other possible dire outcomes).\n\n D: (goes on a rant about how you can’t predict what’s going to happen based on statistics).\n\n D: You can do just Herceptin, but then you lose the synergy of Chemo plus Herceptin. When you pair chemo and herceptin, you don’t just get 1+1=2, it’s more like 1+1=3 or 4. (First thing he’s said to actually explain anything)\n\n R: Ok that makes sense. Can we talk about adjusting the dose?\n\n D: You can quit if you want to!\n\n R: I’m not asking to quit. I’m asking to lower the dose. Please slow down, listen, and answer my question. Can we lower the dose?\n\n D: Yes, I was going to recommend lowering it by 10% (Note that his nurse interviewed me when I got there and when he entered the room, he just said, 'oh, you went to the hospital and now you're on antibiotics'. I said 'yes'. Then he just stared at me for several seconds until I started asking my questions, so if he was planning on recommending a drop in dose, I don't know WHEN he was planning on doing that)\n\n R: I see. At what point does lowering it affect the synergy between the chemo and Herceptin?\n\n D: 30%. I wouldn’t reduce by more than 30% because you’d lose the synergy.\n\n R: Great. How do you feel about reducing now by 20%?\n\n D: Fine. I would prefer 15%, but I’m ok with 20%\n\n R: Ok let’s do that please.\n\n D: We can also eliminate one or two of your rounds. I want you to have at least four, which is what they give to non-lymph involved patients. We can decide on the last two later. Questions to Doctor and Nurse:\n Safe to take Tums? We can prescribe something stronger if necessary.\n I have gotten conflicting information about whether it's safe to take Berberine to help control blood sugar and constipation. Doctor says yes.\n Metoclopramide (anti-nausea) isn't working and spikes my blood sugar. What can I use as an alternative? Gravol. \n For constipation, doctor recommends Lax A Day
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