Oncologist Visit

Today we met with the oncologist for a scheduled review after 2 cycles (4 rounds) of chemotherapy.

Just before we left I got an appointment in the mail with my liver surgeon, Saxon Connor.  The appointment is for next Thursday 21st July and likely means that he is assessing me for surgery in the near term.

We had quite a good session with the oncologist, with some focus on my down state on the Thursday through to Sunday after chemo.  The plan is that I will stop taking one of my anti-nausea medications, Dexamethasone.   I will need to be more aware of potential nausea and take additional medication if needed, but it should resolve some issues causing me real grief, including hiccups, insomnia and potentially depression during the black 4 days.

We talked about the potential for surgery and how many more chemo cycles I could or should have before surgery.  We discussed this paper, it proposed that under normal conditions I should have any liver surgery before having more than 6 rounds of chemo, that is the plan as long as all the right conditions are met, which means no more that 2 more rounds of chemo before a break.  The oncologist is scheduling a CT scan shortly to see if a break for surgery before the 6th round is appropriate.  It is possible, but remote, that my chemo cycle next week will be my last.

We also talked about the object in my lung.  It is not 100% confirmed as cancer because it did not light up during the PET scan.  It likely is a cancer met, but may be too small yet to be confirmed.  We are going to park consideration of it for now and see what happens with future scans.