Sunday, September 12, 2004

We are back from the third treatment at Duke, and Mom is doing very well. The steroid for the swelling in her brain causes swelling in her face, but that will go away when she is able to be weaned off the steroid. The MRI was stable, no shrinkage or growth of the tumor. We learned that with her type of tumor, without treatment it can double in 21-30 days, so the fact that they have stopped it's growth right now is good.

She had the neuropsych and speech testing also, but we don't have any results on that yet. The results of that will probably determine when she is able to drive again, and go back to work. Because physically she is feeling fairly well minus getting tired more easily. I got to see how the treatments go, and here's a little summary...

The first day they do blood work and she meets with the doctor in the morning. Then she is in the treatment room for the afternoon. She receives some medications first to counteract side effects such as nausea, etc. First she receives the study drug O6-BG in a 1 hour infusion through the port in her chest. Then she takes a capsule of the chemo drug Temodar. Wait one hour and then a 90 minute infusion of the chemo CPT-11. Then they start another infusion of the O6-BG which will last 48 hours. She can go back to the hotel and a home health nurse comes in 24 hours to change out the medicine, and 24 hours later to disconnect it. They put it in a fanny pack so she can go out to eat or to the mall or anything while the infusion is taking place.

The next trip is at the end of Sept (29th). She'll fly to North Carolina and her sisters Pat and Katherine will meet her there. Then Katherine is taking her back to her home in Maryland where they can enjoy some time together in the country with all the animals until her next treatment. I think this will be very good for Mom.
Amy