In Reply to: chemo posted by joe on June 24, 2008 at 00:30:50
The goal of the chemo is just to enable me to live longer, and to stop the sarcoma from spreading, which it already has to the lung, which 90% of soft-tissue sarcomas metastatize to. The lung metastates has shown up in both PET from KonKuk and the CT from SMC (samsung medical center). They haven't mentioned surgery at all to me, so it just sounds like I'm supposed to live a normal life when on chemo and hopefully live longer. As usual, the cure is up to me, never was the chemo, which often has no effect on the sarcoma, it's more of a mind-over-sarcoma thing at this point.
they will make 2 incisiions for putting the chemo into the lung directly because of necrosis in the veins.
That will put it directly into some main arteries.
there will be many cycles of 3 weeks each: for 3 weeks, it's doxorubucin and ifosfamide together, then it's 3 weeks of just ifosfamide, followed by 3 weeks of ifosfamide alone ... this is their standard treatment course, which the nurse looked up in the hospital guidebook.
I was told I won't be able to fly for a period of 6 months .... either (a) after starting chemo or (b) at the end of chemo, whichever, I am unclear about that now. It has to do with side-effects of white blood cell count, something, medical stuff which was in Korean and went right over my head.
They are planning on using doxorubicin and ifosphamide. AIM (doxorubicin, ifosfamide, and mesna) is a well known first line chemotherapy regimen for the soft tissue sarcomas; "A" stands for adriamycin which is equal to doxorubicin, and Mesna stops internal bleeding. I plan on, of course, using wikipedia for these two to find out more.
Ifosfamide is normally given over three to four days, every three to four weeks.
Ifosfamide is often used in conjunction with Mesna to avoid internal bleeding in the patient, in particular hemorrhagic cystitis.
- Lowered resistance to infection
- Bruising or bleeding
- Anaemia (low number of red blood cells)
- Feeling sick (nausea) and being sick (vomiting)
- Hair loss
- Tiredness and feeling weak
- Irritation of the bladder
- Changes to nails
and then, there's doxorubucin ..... a.k.a. adriamycin which is what the doctor initially called it.
docorubucin stops the DNA from replicating.....