A Brand New Day!!

What a day....

As many of you know I met with a new Oncologist today. I started out this morning with an overwhelming sense of peace. I haven't had that in a while. I have struggled the past week with alot of pain and today was the first time that it was under control. I was up and about most of the day.

My appointment was today at 2:30 at the Arizona Cancer Center with Dr. Dragovich. The Cancer Center is breathtaking, a beautiful state of the art center. I walked in and just knew this was where I was menat to be. Dr. Dragovich is a younger, very optomistic and positive man. As with all if the Dr's that read my case the first thing he asked was wether or not anyone in my family has a history of cancer. They are all clearly puzzled that a 35 year old healthy woman has this terrible crazy case of colon cancer. The first topic of discussion was other chemotherapy treatments. The next line of defense to treat colon cancer is a drug called Irinotecan, it is also known as CPT-11. He said that some people respond better to this drug than they do 5FU, my previous chemo drug. I will have some side effects similar to the ones I had with 5FU and he said I will lose my hair on this one. Oh well I will just need to go find a good wig!! Maybe I will get a couple and can be a blonde or a brunette on any given day. Then the moment that almost made me jump out of my chair he began discussing a treatment called HIPEC treatment. The ironic thing about this was I had done some research while I was in the hospital this last time and I emailed my family about this cutting edge treatment, so it was on my list of questions to talk to him about. HIPEC treatment is basically a combination of surgery and chemotherapy. They go in surgically and remove all the cancer they possibly can and then they run a chemotherapy agent though your abdomen while open. Sounds crazy and amazing all at the same time. When I had done my research I had found that this treatment wasn't offered here in AZ and the closest facility was in San Diego at UCSD. So, I asked Dr. Dragovich if I would need to travel out of state for this procedure and he says that in the past yes that would have been the case, but this procedure is now going to be offered here in Tucson at the Cancer Center. He says in fact I will see if Dr. Ong, the surgical Oncologist that performs this procedure can stop by and introduce himself to you!! At this point in the conversation I am pretty sure I had a permanent smile on my face, because I was so blown away that finally I was being given some other options. So, basically we decided that I am going to start chemotherapy again next week. Dr. Dragovich said he would like to see how I respond to the new drug and then go from there. After Dr. Dragovich left the room he went and got Dr. Ong. Another amazing, positive extremely intelligent doc. He explained the HIPEC treatment to us. Both docs said this treatment is somewhat contreversial, mostly because it is rather new here in the United States. They have been doing the procedure for a while now in Europe, but only the last few years here. They said that there are many suuccessful cases with this prrocedure. The most successful are people whose cancer is contained in the peritoneal cavity, like mine. Although my cancer has spread it is all within the abdomen. He said that when cancer spreads they classify all of them as stage 4, but not all stage 4 cancers are the same. He said that they believe stage 4 that is contained in one general area is different and more manageable then cases where it spreads to the lungs etc. Dr. Ong said that he has been fighting to get this treatment here at the U of A for the past year and guess what it is coming here starting next month!!! I have prayed for a miracle and it sure feels like this could be it. There are only 41 other facility's in the US that offer this procedure, the U of A is # 42. I will meet with Dr. Wong over the next few weeks to discuss things in more detail, so more to come.
After Dr. Wong left, my mom, Dale, Mike and I just stared at each other in shock!! Finally, some HOPE.

I go tomorrow to meet with a dietician and for a chemotherapy education class. We have not scheduled my appointment yet for next week, but it will probably be Tues, Wed or Thurs. What an AMAZING day, it was fantastic. I can't tell you how inspired I am by this new information.

Thanks for all the prayers these past few weeks, I think it is working!!

I will keep you posted....more to come :)

Love you guys,
Tara