Category: Mom’s health chronicles

May 5: Mom and Dad drove down to Chicago last night for Mom’s first round of her anti-cancer vaccine.  She had a new cat-scan taken last Friday, and when Dr. Oyama looked at it today, he said she remains cancer free.  Yay!  I can get used to this news:)

Here’s a link to a description of Mom’s new clinical trail.

Mom received eight intradermal injections today.  The hope is that the vaccine will cause Mom’s body to identify and attack any pancreatic cancer cells that remain or try to grow back. The vaccine is composed of dead pancreatic cancer cell spliced with a mouse gene that the human body attacks.  The logic behind the vaccine is that when her immune system to attacks this mutated pancreatic cancer cell that the immune system may then extrapolate to think that all pancreatic cancer cells are bad and thereafter kill them off too.

April 11: Three months after Mom’s major surgery up at Mayo, she is feeling good, had her last round of chemo, and got positive news from her recent cat-scan.  We met with Dr. Diggs today, and he said that the radiologist who reviewed her cat scan said that they can’t find any signs of cancer.  Yay!
She ended up having her last round of chemo today.  When she went in to have it last week, they said that her white blood cell counts were too low.  So nearly 11 months after discovering that nasty tumor, Mom is completing her last round of chemo on the clinical trial in which she was participating.
She is now in the process of trying to get enrolled in a new clinical trial at Northwestern University that would use a vaccine to fight any remaining cancer cells in her body.  More about that when we hear back from Northwestern.
So Mom will probably be tired and a little under the weather this week, but it’s the last week, so that is great!

April 3: Mom is nearing the finish line for her clinical trial.  The last round of post-surgery chemotherapy is tomorrow.  And she received some promising news last week — she may be a good candidate for a clinical trial vaccine that we have been researching. The pancreatic cancer vaccine clinical trial is based at Northwestern University in Chicago.  If she decides to participate, Mom will go down for 12 injections over the course of about six months. Click here for more info on the clinical trial.
Here’s an article on cancer vaccines from WebMD.
Johns Hopkins has a different kind of vaccine, but they have a nice website that describes in a flash movie how a pancreatic cancer vaccine works.

March 26: Mom only has two more chemo treatments of the gemcitabine in this clinical trial (March 28 and April 4).  And so far, from the perspective of someone who a) isn’t taking the treatments and b) doesn’t live with the person taking the treatments, the chemo seems to be going really well.  Mom gets pretty fatigued the week of the treatments, and she has some good drugs that help with the nausea.  I think she still doesn’t feel right in part because of the surgery and in part because of the extensive radiation she had last summer.
All that said, this round of chemo hasn’t hit her to hard.  She hasn’t lost her hair, and there haven’t been that many days that she has really felt rotten.  We’ve spent most Mondays together, usually shopping and/or spending time with “Dr. Andrew.”  So it’s been about as good of a round of chemo as we could have hoped for.
In other good news, a law was passed on Friday that requires insurance agencies to pay for clinical trials for cancer patients.  We’re looking at a couple clinical trials that Mom might try this summer, so this could be really important.  The American Cancer Society played a major role in promoting this legislation.

Governor Jim Doyle today signed Assembly Bill 617, the “Cancer Patient Protection Act,” legislation that will help ensure cancer patients can receive the treatment with the highest likelihood for success by requiring insurance companies to cover treatments associated with clinical trials.

“It is unconscionable that a cancer patient should have to pass up therapies that could significantly prolong or even save their life because their insurance company won’t pay,” Governor Doyle said.
“The Cancer Patient Protection Act will help make sure every treatment option is available to cancer patients, and I am pleased to sign it into law.”

Last year, more than 26,000 people in Wisconsin were diagnosed with cancer.  For those suffering from cancer, clinical trials offer some of the most cutting-edge treatments available.  But thousands of patients opt out of these treatments because their insurance requires them to pay out-of-pocket.  Many times these treatments are routine, like chemotherapy, which the insurance company would pay for if it wasn’t a clinical trial.

Assembly Bill 617 protects cancer patients from having to make treatment decisions with their pocketbook.  It guarantees clinical trial participants the same insurance coverage for their routine care through a clinical trial that would get if they chose a standard treatment.

Additionally, because this bill will make clinical trials a mainstream treatment option, it will encourage more people to participate in cancer research, which can ultimately save many more lives.

Governor Doyle thanked Representatives Scott Gunderson and Sheldon Wasserman, as well as Senators Cathy Stepp and Jon Erpenbach for their work on the bill.

March 12: Mom had her second round of chemo on Tuesday, March 7.
She was scheduled to go to Mayo for a consultation with an oncologist there on March 3, but at the last minute, we found out that the insurance didn’t go through. So she’s currently going through an appeal process, and in the meantime, she’s proceeding with the clinical trial protocol.  At some point, she’ll go back up to Mayo to have a follow-up appointment with Dr. Farnell and hopefully also get a consult with an oncologist there.

Mom’s post-surgery chemo protocol calls for two weeks of chemo followed by one week off.  So she had treatments on Feb. 14 and 21, had the 28th off, and had another treatment on March 7.  She said that her main side effect is fatigue a couple days later.  She’s scheduled for treatment on March 14, 28, and April 4.  We thought she was supposed to have 15 rounds of post-surgery chemo, but according to the arm of the clinical trial that she’s assigned to, she’s just suppposed to have six treatments.  Not sure if that’s a good things since she’ll have less icky treatments or a bad thing because more treatments would be more effective.

Yesterday Mom and Andrew and I went shopping for the afternoon and then spent the evening togehter.  It was a great day.  Beautiful weather and fun in every respect.  Plus we got a great coat for mom and some cute clothes for Andrew!

Continue reading “Chemo treatments are staying the course”

Feb 27: It’s almost six weeks since Mom’s successful surgery, and she is well on the road to recovery.  So far along the road, in fact, that she started her post-surgery chemo regime on Valentine’s Day.  She is scheduled to get an infusion of gemcitabine every two out of three Tuesdays for 15 weeks. I think she said that put her at finishing in June.  The 28th will be her first week off.  During her first week of treatment, Mom had some negative side effects, mostly relating to headaches and racing pulse.  She went into the clinic for infusions of saline on Friday, and by Saturday she was feeling better.
On Friday, March 3, Mom is going to be heading back to Mayo for a follow-up appointment with Dr. Farnell and with an oncologist there.  I’ll let you know what they say! 
We’re on to the next phase of treatment…and Mom is doing a fabulous job.
~Althea

Continue reading “Mom’s post-surgery chemo regime has begun”

Jan. 31: To all those who have been checking my website for updates on Mom’s continued recovery, I apologize for the long delay between posts.  Andrew’s recent bouts with pink eye, a high fever, and getting two new teeth sapped all my extra time and energy.
But the good news is that there really hasn’t been much to report in the last week or so.  Mom continues to improve.  She went to Terry’s condo last week, went out to Culvers with Dad on Saturday, and yesterday Dad brought her over to my place for the afternoon.  She kept me company while we tended to a somewhat unhappy Andrew.

She’s still very tender and taking it slow.  Several naps help.  But she’s looking good, and I’m sort of awed at how well she’s recovering.  Mom has an appointment back up at Mayo in the next week when I believe she meets with an oncologist there to talk about additional chemo options.  I’ll post an update when we know more about what her next treatment will be.

Thanks again to so, so, so many people for thinking of Mom while she had her surgery.  I still can’t believe that it went so well.

Jan 21: It’s 1 pm, and Mom just walked in the door of her home.  Yay!  Terry drove up to Mayo last night, and this morning Mom and Maretta and Dad and Terry came back home.
Duncan went bonkers when Mom came in, and the cats continue to circle her.
We had a beautiful snowfall yesterday, so once again the outside world is white and bright.  Mom is feeling well…the drive home wasn’t bad…and she’s beginning to catch up on the newspapers she missed.  We’re all so glad to have our mommy back at home.