Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Chemo Day #4

Very good yesterday from the lab results: CA125 count is 135 down from 1300! The CA125 is the cancer indicator in her blood, and when the count keeps going down, it’s a good thing! For a while it was up to 3000.

Apparently there are different indicators for different types of cancers… for ovarian cancer they watch the CA125, for prostate cancer it’s the PSA, and for breast cancer it’s something else.

We also got the results from the CT scan she had last week - also showed that the cancer has minimized considerably. After only three chemo treatments, this is very good news and Dr. Porubcin was very happy with these results. Mom is going to continue with three more chemo treatments and then she’ll get to the surgery discussion.

They weren’t able to check on the blood clots with the CT scan, however he’s pretty sure that they are dissolving. Dr. Porubcin wants her to keep on taking the Lovenox for about the next 10 months to keep the clotting to a minimum. The abdominal fluid buildup she had a couple of months ago, added on with the chemotherapy, aggravates the clotting. He doesn’t see a need for her to go back on the Coumodin.

There are a couple of "newbies" in the chemo room today. You can tell when they walk in that this is the first session. And they had trouble with their ports just like mom did at her first chemo session. The nurses swear by the barometric pressure in the atmosphere. When it's high, they have a hard time with port access. And apparently high barometric pressure causes pregnant women's water to break as well. Who knew?

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