Sutent Clinical Trial...

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  • taj72
    taj72 Member Posts: 50
    edited June 2009

    Thanks for asking.  My mom is being admitted to the hospital as I type.  She's been fighting a fever all weekend and she went to the hospital yesterday and again today.  She's having chills and fever and some sort of spasms.  They took over six hours to actually get a doctor to see her and they decided to admit her and give her antibiotics and monitor her overnight?  I live in Scottsdale, AZ and my mom is in Tucson (about 2 1/2 hours away), so it's very frustrating when I am not with her and she gets sick.  I usually go down for her chemo treatments on Thursdays and sometimes stay overnight, but this neutropenia has definitely thrown a monkey wrench in the plans.

    She's starting her neupogen shots tomorrow.  Although the standard protocol is for the shots to be given the day after the chemo treatment for four days.  Her doctor wanted her to wait until Sunday to start her shots and have them up through Wednesday, then chemo on Thursday.  I don't know why he prefers doing it that way but he does.

    I know neutropenia is common and that her WBC count should return to an acceptable level once she starts the neupogen but this whole experience has been very scary and makes me very worried.  I feel helpless and out of control.

    I did ask the on-call onc tonight about whether the antibiotics would reverse?/interfere with my mom's chemo treatments and she said no.  What is your info on that?

    What are your thoughts on the neutropenia?  Any suggestions, comments, info I should know?  I appreciate your advice and suggestions.  Thank you in advance! 

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  • FloridaLady
    FloridaLady Member Posts: 2,155
    edited June 2009

    Antibiotics works a lot like antioxidants and make the body repair the damage that the chemo is doing to free radicals cells.  My oncologist would not give them to me unless I ran a fever more than two days of 102.  He was very tough on this. He also said my body needed to learn how to repair it's self each time. Out of 51 chemo treatments I only had this happen once.

    I was in a trail once at MDA and my blood was so bad that my local oncologist wanted me to have a blood transfusion but the trial doctor would not let him because it would destroy the chemo data for the trial. They would not let me have antibiotocis either. Lucky I was better in a few days without shots or transfusion

    Flalady

    Flalady

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  • taj72
    taj72 Member Posts: 50
    edited June 2009

    FlaLady,

    So interesting that you say that.  My mom was discharged from the hospital today.  The doctors on staff started her on IV antiobiotics last night, but my mom's real onc was the physican on the floor at the hospital this morning doing rounds and he told my mom that she wouldn't need any more antibiotics that her WBC was already rising from test results and that she should start on her neupogen today and that would help her body finish the job the antibiotics started and she could go home this afternoon.  Ironically, the hospital doctors wanted her to stay another day (today) and stay on antibiotics another day, but her regular said no.  My mom decided to follow her regular onc's advise and she went home today, stopped antibiotics and took her neupogen shot (first one).  So hopefully it will work.  Her regular onc says he is confident based on her lab work that her WBC should be ok for her to resume chemo on Thursday.    Thanks for your input, it looks like our onc. is similar to yours and only wants antibiotics as absolute last resort.

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  • taj72
    taj72 Member Posts: 50
    edited October 2009

    Hello all!  I haven't posted since my initial post several months ago, but thought I'd post tonight because I'm having a very tough time right now.  My mom was diagnosed with BC (Stage 3B, Triple Neg) in April.  Because of the size of her tumor and chest wall invasion, it was determined that she would do neo-adjuvant chemotherapy to try to shrink the tumor prior to surgery.  She was selected to participate in a clinical trial of a new drug (Sutent) along with weekly chemo which started in May.  She did 12 weekly treatments of Taxol along with daily Sutent for those 12 weeks.  The tumor responded very well to the Taxol and shrunk from the approximate size of a golf ball to  practically undetectable to the touch.  Then about 6 weeks ago my mom began phase 2 of the trial and switched from Taxol and Sutent to weekly Adriomycin and daily, oral tablet dosage Cytoxan.  She was scheduled to do 15 weeks of that, instead at last week’s chemo we learned that her monthly ultrasound showed that she is failing to respond to this chemo and the cancer has restarted growth.  It is now detectable to touch again and approximately the size of a marble.  She has been removed from the clinical trial and we meet with the oncologist tomorrow to see what our next course of treatment is.  Most likely the next step is surgery and then radiation.  However, what is really scaring me is that, based on whatever the onc saw on the MRI he ordered to confirm the ultrasound results, he has now ordered a PT scan which makes me question whether the cancer has spread.  I am very scared for my mom, since she is triple negative, if 12 weeks of Taxol didn’t stop it and Adriomycin and Cytoxan are ineffective, what else is there?  Also, my mom is unlikely to do any more chemo after six months already that haven’t been successful.  Please, any thoughts/advice would be appreciated.  Thank you.

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