Lost in the shuffle . . .

. . . of dealing with the recent unexpected spinal cord compressive events (and their terrible manifestations) is how well the experimental chemotherapy has continued to control the tumors that have been tracked for the past year via CT scans. I’ve previously tried to illustrate progress via graphs of linear and volumetric dimensions, but I’ll keep it simple here, namely how much lineal shrinkage has occurred versus weeks of chemotherapy. Linear dimension metric for each CT evaluation is calculated as the sum of the largest dimension (mm) of each tumor.


Scan Lung Abdom. Spinae Gluteus Sum of LD Decrease Weeks
1/21/09 39 36 214 141 63 51 130 55 446 ---
2/6/09 31 31 228 127 54 122 53 435 2% 2
4/9/09 30 28 225 123 48 122 47 425 5% 11
5/21/09 29 25 210 120 41 35 111 41 391 13% 17
7/18/09 27 22 200 114 32 29 113 37 372 19% 25
9/8/09 26 22 177 116 20 25 98 25 326 32% 33
10/22/09 21 20 169 113 14 24 98 25 312 41% 39
1/5/10 23 20 157 113 16 22 88 18 290 50% 50


Fifty percent shrinkage after 50 weeks of chemo. Impressive. But the question remains, why/how did metastasizes to the spine develop and progress concurrent with the shrinkage on the other fronts? Regardless, there are experimental drugs that are proving effective at addressing spinal mets, and I am confident that we will identify one. Radiation should also prove useful on this front.

There are some encouraging signs of reawakening of my legs, so my surgeon wants to perform another surgery in a few days to give me every possible advantage. I’m too tired at the moment to detail that surgery but will when I can. Heading off to MRI for a brain scan in a moment . . . hoping they don’t find an empty box.