Radiation Done

I'm so glad my last radiation treatment was yesterday. It's been quite an experience with the problem of keeping awake during treatment and always being so very tired. Lately I've been having trouble swallowing and have nausea every day. My radiation doctor tells me that's because the lymph node they were treating was right in front of my esophagus so it was hit too. It made sense because I felt the pain in mid upper back. About 10% of the esophagus is burned but he assures me it'll heal. I also have some fluid in my right lung which is not a concern.

During my last Oncology appointment I asked my Oncologist to contact my second opinion doctor in Tucson who runs drug trials for lung cancer to see if she had a drug that would work for me. He asked me if I would prefer to work with an Oncologist in Scottsdale who runs drug trials. It would be difficult to drive to Tucson every week or whenever I needed to be seen so I chose the Scottsdale doctor.

Gary and I went to the appointment to meet the Scottsdale Oncologist and were not only impressed but excited and hopeful that he would find the right medication for me. In short he's having my biopsy tissue which was done 3 years ago examined for DNA to know which drug or combination of drugs would work the best.

Gary also found a site online where lung cancer survivors share information on their drugs: what worked what didn't and what they're on now that's working. All of the names of the new medications they talked about came up with our meeting in Scottsdale as well as others.

I'm off Tarceva which was attacking my eyes every night making it painful to touch them and in the morning I woke up with crust on my eyes. There were a lot of other side effects which I won't miss at all. Most of the survivors had been on Tarceva also and found that it stopped working.

My job now is to build my energy level back up so I can exercise and play golf. Hope to see you soon.