SarahLyn's Journey

We saw dr. Picozzi yesterday in Seattle.  He looked over my charts and records, gave us more information about two studies currently happening and talked about some other forms of treatment options.  All of the studies and treatments he's working with are for metastatic pancreatic cancer.  I'm eligible for any of them

His take on my tumor count going up is that the chemo is not working.  He's surprised my Eugene doc hasn't started me on something else and dr. P suggested folfiril...basically what I was having before but without the oxilaplatin.  His input is that once the cancer cells are reduced the antibody study he is doing would have a better effectiveness.  And so, I am seeing dr. Segal here in Portland to see if I can start the folfiril.  Hopefully I can get started and get on the same schedule I was on in Eugene...which would mean an infusion end of next week.  He suggested an eight week treatment with one week on one week off.  Plus he suggested a cat scan and at some point I might enter the antibody study.

Dr. Picozzi has been doing work with pancreatic cancer for over thirty years.  He focuses on metastatic pancreatic cancer and in his experience four or five years of life after diagnosis is a good success rate.  It is one of the more aggressive and hard to treat cancers...of course.  When they monitor the success of studies to extend life they measure it in months..,not years.

So...there could be a miracle and I could beat this renowned unbeatable nasty or my tough, tenacious body could just say "enough! Be gone you ugly junk you" or I could have four or five hopefully good years of life and live long enough for them to find another miraculous cure...or something else that would extend my life and quality there of.  The other options are less fun.

That's all the news fit to print.  I hope it wasn't too much.  I love you all, I'm glad you're on my team, I want to see more of each of you whenever possible and I intend to keep on walking.... SarahLyn