We got a call from Dr. Sharfman just a few minutes ago. Not good news, but not all bad news...
The tumors in Bobby's lungs have grown slightly since his last scan in April. This means that the IL-2 did not work. We had hoped that the IL2 would stop or reverse growth of the cancer in his lungs. It works only 15-20% of the time. A good part of this news is that Bobby does not have to suffer through any more IL-2. He was not ever looking forward to more of that. It was nasty stuff! A few of the tumors have shown very slight growth, there were no new tumors. His liver looks good. So, although the IL-2 didn't work, there are still positives out of today's scan.
The great news is that Dr. Sharfman said that all of this mess about Bobby's heart and EKG is nothing. He knew about the EKG report while Bobby was at Hopkins and it was not of any concern. He was surprised the family doctor even got the report. He said to go ahead and get the stress test (tomorrow) because it can't hurt anything...he expects it to be normal. Bobby is relieved to hear that.
Dr. S will call NIH (National Cancer Institute) tomorrow to see about getting him back into another clinical trial. That process should be easy because we set everything up before we left NIH. The doctor at NIH has kept in contact with Bobby to check on his progress. I will email him tonight. I will try to post some information about what we think might be next (about the clinical trial) after I do some research.
Bobby is understandably upset. It would have really been great if this had worked. Although the IL-2 didn't work, there are still options AND we were given news today that is positive. Bobby says he felt all along that this wouldn't work. He is having a hard time trying to be positive. I'm giving him lots of things to look forward to.
We are still making plans to leave for the BIG TRIP. We will hopefully find out more about NIH's time frame and be able to plan the dates around the that. It will all work out-for one reason or another. It has been hard to make firm plans and I don't think today's news helped.
We appreciate everyone's thoughts and prayers that carried us through-we're not finished this battle yet! We have had someone bring meals to us every night for the last month. Thank you. We talked to so many people today (at Martin's) and the support Bobby & I have gotten is just amazing. People have been sending us supportive texts and messages all day. We love you guys!
No comments:
Post a Comment