I AM A CANCER KILLING MACHINE

Jan 2nd. follow up appointment. dr. dooms assistant, the immunotherapy coordinator comes into the room and has a big ole smile on her face. she says that dr. doom has plans for me and that i should be so excited. we chat for a bit and then she leaves as we wait for dr. doom.

dr. doom comes in and starts off with his usual straight forward no emotion attitude and says that we should go look at the the scan first and then come back and discuss next steps. Field Trip!
we all proceed to the mobile monitor in the hallway and wait as he pulls up my first scan from august and my dec 27th scan. he proceeds to point out the progress i have made. it is absolutely amazing!!! i AM a cancer killing machine thanks to my miracle drug sutent! i have an overall average of 50% reduction. the cancerous tissue in and around the kidney itself had been reduced by 50%!! 50% with only 2 full rounds of sutent. the best part tho...the icing on the cake is that the cancer "wall" surrounding my aorta has also been reduced by about half. so much so, that the surgeon is fairly confident that after just one more round of sutent, he will be able to operate and get the kidney and at least some of the surrounding cancer out. he is so confident that he has already scheduled an appointment for me with him March 11th.

also, i had two spots on my liver previously...the scan now showed that one was completely gone and the other had significantly reduced in size as well.

w00t! w00t! w00t! i can't believe it. it is too good to be true, yet it is true. the 30% of patients that responded to the sutent the way that i have had already had the "mothership" aka the cancerous kidney removed. the best chance of reduction in amount of cancer was when the source had already been removed. that is why my case was so grim originally. why my original diagnosis was 3 to 20 months. but, as i have mentioned several times now, i am a cancer killing machine and have beat the odds so far. i am going to continue to beat the odds i know it! i can do this. i can beat this.

50% reduction is almost unheard of with just 2 rounds of sutent. my dr. was very pleased. dr. doom blushes!

so, the plan is one more round of sutent. i start tonight, yuck. in 3 weeks i go back for my usual mid-cycle check up and blood tests. then get another scan in 7 weeks to see if i am still a cancer killing machine. my surgeon will look at that scan as well and then i have the appointment with him march 11th. im hoping this appointment will be a pre-op consultation. i never thought i would be hoping for surgery, but i never thought i would be diagnosed with stage IV inoperable kidney cancer either.

thanks to everyone for your well wishes and support. i greatly appreciate everything. i never knew i had so many great friends and people who love me.