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Wahoo, my enrollment in the clinical trial is now official, and unless there is a holdup with the medication I will be starting on Monday. First is four rounds of dose dense AC (adriamycin and cytoxan) along with the avastin or placebo. That's every other week. I'm a little nervous since by all accounts the AC part is the most brutal. Adriamycin is actually nicknamed 'the red devil'. *gulp* I'm trying to figure out if it is disturbingly cool or just plain disturbing that it makes you pee red.
Once those four rounds are done, I move on to twelve rounds of dose dense taxol (again with the avastin or placebo) given weekly. These are, by all accounts, the gentler and easier to tolerate overall rounds. However it has a higher rate of allergic reaction so the infusions take longer since you have to get a buttload of benadryl and whatnot with.
After that, the radiation oncologist has already told the research coordinator that it's pretty certain he'll be recommending radiation (I am in a gray area, but my vote is for 'yes' and it sounds like his is too). So it will be time to cross my fingers for superpowers again. There is no set plan in place yet, but the standard seems to be a month of daily zapping (not including weekends).
If I am in either the placebo arm, or the 'just with chemo' round of the avastin trial (we won't know until then), that will be it on the avastin front. If I am in the other arm, I will then continue getting avastin once every three weeks for the next year.
At a minimum treatment will go around six months. Doing the math, I'll be in the taxol phase of chemo for Vividcon, which kind of sucks, since I don't know how much energy I'll have for glowstick waving and hugging. What I am hoping for is that I am one of those people who tolerates chemo really well, and will be able to just sort of cruise through and put cancer on the back burner while all this is going on. *fingers crossed*
Once those four rounds are done, I move on to twelve rounds of dose dense taxol (again with the avastin or placebo) given weekly. These are, by all accounts, the gentler and easier to tolerate overall rounds. However it has a higher rate of allergic reaction so the infusions take longer since you have to get a buttload of benadryl and whatnot with.
After that, the radiation oncologist has already told the research coordinator that it's pretty certain he'll be recommending radiation (I am in a gray area, but my vote is for 'yes' and it sounds like his is too). So it will be time to cross my fingers for superpowers again. There is no set plan in place yet, but the standard seems to be a month of daily zapping (not including weekends).
If I am in either the placebo arm, or the 'just with chemo' round of the avastin trial (we won't know until then), that will be it on the avastin front. If I am in the other arm, I will then continue getting avastin once every three weeks for the next year.
At a minimum treatment will go around six months. Doing the math, I'll be in the taxol phase of chemo for Vividcon, which kind of sucks, since I don't know how much energy I'll have for glowstick waving and hugging. What I am hoping for is that I am one of those people who tolerates chemo really well, and will be able to just sort of cruise through and put cancer on the back burner while all this is going on. *fingers crossed*