A New Week...A New Doctor...

We met with Dr. Kuo today (pronounced like status quo).  I liked him quite a bit. Apparently he is friends with my first oncologist, Dr. Chai, which made me feel even better.  He talked with us for about 35 minutes about our options for treatment after surgery.  He told us that he wanted to look at two general "tests" for risk recurrence.

The first was the "adjuvent online" which takes basic parameters and determines the statistical probability of recurrence.  This test said that with just a mastectomy, my chances for recurrence are 20%.  With an additional "estrogen blocking" therapy it reduces my recurrence risk to 12%.  Finally, if I add chemo to the other two therapies, the chances of recurrence are reduced to 6%.

The second one is the Oncotype DX test.  The Oncotype test can't be done until the tumor is out and sent to a pathologist.

So, we decided to have my surgeon put in the port during the surgery.  We will send out the tumor to do the Oncotype test.  If the results of that test come back with a super low number (meaning low chance of recurrence), then it may mean another discussion is necessary...

If I do chemo, it will be 4 rounds of Cytoxan and Adrimyacin, occurring every 14 days, immediately followed by 4 rounds of Taxol, occurring every 14 days.  It will suck, but it will truly only be 4 months.  I would likely start by the beginning of July, and it would be over by the end of October...

One issue with Adrimyacin though...it can cause some damage to your heart.  Dr. Kuo said that there is a clinical trial that is available at Huntersville Presby (Novant, or whatever it's called now) that is looking to see if a particular drug can help protect the heart when a patient is having to take Adrimyacin.  If I decide to do it, I would have an oncology cardiologist who would be closely monitoring my heart through all of it.

I think that it's all starting to affect Dane.  The initial shock and getting our plan laid out is over, and now I think that the stress is setting in.  Personally, I think that cancer, in general, is harder on the caregivers.

So...it's a lot to take in.