Beating down them tumors.

I finally received the radiologist’s report regarding last Thursday’s CT scan. As usual, the radiologist ignored the documentation protocol requested by the administrators of the clinical trial in which I’m enrolled. So although that makes the tracking of dimensional trends more difficult than it should be, I’m still able to compile and reduce enough data to shed some light on the situation.

This time around, the radiologist provided two dimensions (one longitudinal and one transverse) for three of the four tumors larger than 1 cm, and one dimension for the fourth in that size range. (Although the cardiac tumor is also larger than 1 cm, sizing is not provided as it cannot be easily measured because of its dynamic behavior.) Following is the updated graph, with additional observations below:

Over the past twelve weeks, the following shrinkages have been observed (average of known dimensions for each tumor):

Abdominal Tumor: 7%
Gluteal Tumor: 18%
Spinae Tumor: 24%
Lung Tumor: 13%
Overall Average: 15%

So overall average tumor shrinkage has been slightly better than 1% per week. Assuming that trend holds, it would appear that these puppies might disappear altogether after about 100 weeks of treatment. Can I tolerate two years of chemo? For all the tea in China? For all the cannabis in Jamaica? Thailand? Stay tuned . . . we’ll find out. Chemo Round #7 begins tomorrow . . .