Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Met with my Huntsman doctor today.  The nurse that drew my labs was looking at my info and asked how long I have been coming in for treatments.  I said it has been a little of 2 years now.  She was saying that she noticed my age and thought that I was awfully young to be going through all of this.  She then asked how they found the cancer.  It's hard to believe that it's been over two years since my diagnosis and even my surgery now.

So far all my labs look good but it takes a day or so to get the results for the CA-125 number.  They said that that test they run in batches so they run it at a certain time during the day and do all of the CA-125 draws at the same time.  I asked what the course of action would be if my number is above 70.  They said that there are a couple of different options that we can go down.  One would be to put me on an oral maintenance drug called Tamoxifen.  This is one that is used quite often with breast cancer patients and the thinking is the same with ovarian cancer patients.  With BRCA-1 patients it is thought that the female hormones can contribute to the cancer and the Tamoxifen helps to inhibit to production of those hormones.  Another possible option is another study drug which is called a PARP inhibitor.  There is a study that is apparently looking specifically at BRCA-1 patients and if the drug helps inhibit the growth of tumors.  That is also an oral drug that I think they said is taken once or twice a day.

All of this of course is assuming that my next scan still comes up clear and that I feel fine with no other symptoms exhibiting themselves.  If my next CT scan is not clear then we would look into another possible surgery and/or chemotherapy treatment.  The hope though is that even if the cancer comes back, we will hopefully be catching it at such an early stage that it will be more easily treated than the first time around.

My blood pressure was normal when I went for my infusion so that part went relatively easy.