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2 posts tagged hogkin's lymphoma
Some Personal News, Part Four
I am getting very anxious to send you an update with unexpected good news. Unfortunately, I won’t be doing that anytime soon. ICE chemotherapy did not work. If anything my disease has grown slightly. My cancer is as stubborn as I am. And so I insist that I’m not going anywhere. Cancer will have to.
Platitudes aside, I really don’t know what this means for my prognosis. To summarize Aura, it feels increasingly pointless to insist that my doctors speculate on a statistic or give us a percentage point to stand on, when all we care about is that lymphoma lets ME be. We are left to rest our hope in the fact that my oncologist, Dr. Winter, maintains great optimism. It seems more and more evident that she is talented and determined, and has access to the latest medical treatments and the best Hodgkin docs in the country.
And so it is that out of necessity, my treatment plan has gone from standard practice to experimentation. While I am not feeling like pioneering, I will go west, ceding the reigns to Dr. Winter. We spoke at length this morning of our next steps. She is very hopeful, as am I, that we will be able to use a new therapy called Brentuximab Vedotin (SGN-35), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brentuximab_vedotin. It was approved by the FDA on August 19, 2011 (crazy, right? I was well into treatment by that point…), for the treatment of very specific cases of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. There is gray area as to whether I qualify, and with the cost of new medicine, I need to pre-certify with Blue Cross and Blue Shield in order to proceed. I’ll be talking with Dr. Winter on Monday to go over next steps, and will update the blog with more information as I find the time.
As one who likes to argue, I believe she has a good argument for SGN-35 to be allowed in my treatment. As I understand the drug, it has been shown to target Hodgkin’s cells while leaving healthy cells be. It’s like a teacher that can deal with the class ass, without effecting the education of the rest of the lot. This is very exciting to me. While any new drug has unknown side effects, the potential of SGN-35 is hard to ignore, and as treatments fail for me, I am slightly taken aback by how quickly I will sign up for an experiment. I guess it makes a difference that the experiment is being argued for by my well-respected oncologist, rather than by me, after some late night googling.
We’re digging in our heals. As we rode home from the hospital I was taken by an analogy. Remember that time you were in traffic, and some idiot in a ______ jammed passed your law-abiding ride—freaking out bicyclists, pedestrians, other drivers, and maybe even home owners—only to slam on their breaks at the next red light? Remember when you were still behind them 15 lights later? I’ve been the class ass. I’ve been the idiot. But this time I’m the law-abiding ride, and I’m gonna get there. Stay tuned for unexpected good news.
