I’ve now had two rounds of the new regime – an infusion of
mitomycin over a 45-minute period, and a two-week infusion of FUDR, both
injected through my pump. Now I’m in the two-week off period that follows each
round of treatment, and soon I will have a scan that will say whether the new
treatment is working.
Meanwhile, I’ve learned more about the treatment itself.
First, I’m pretty sure now that I was wrong to write after the first set of
infusions that a single needle seemed to have been used for two separate insertions, one
for each of the two drugs being injected into the pump. In hindsight, that
doesn’t really seem conceivable, and my impression from the second set of
infusions was that in fact a new needle was used for each of the two drugs. I
guess the sheer size of those needles distracts me. (They need to be long, by
the way, because they’re not primarily going into me – instead they’re going
through a little bit of me on the way to their target in the pump. But even the
nurse for one of the rounds agreed that they are big needles.)
Second, yesterday for the first time I grasped how much of
the FUDR is actually going to my liver in the two-week infusion process. The
answer for the past two weeks was: 18 cubic centimeters. I know this because
the nurse drained 12 cc’s of the drug
from the pump, and she explained that they expect to drain between 10 and 15 cc’s
– out of a total of 30 cc’s that they put in at the start of the process. (Once
the medicine is drained at the end of the two-week treatment period, by the
way, the pump is then loaded for the two-week off period with an inert
substance, a mixture of saline solution and heparin, an anti-clotting
agent.) So that means that over the two weeks of the infusion, just a shade
over 1 cc of FUDR was making its way to my liver each day. That must say
something about how powerful a drug FUDR is. I hope that power is making itself
felt against the tumors. It’s also probably having some impact on my healthy
liver cells, but fortunately the blood test results show that my liver is doing
well despite these medical affronts.
Third, after the latest infusion I had two or three days of
abdominal discomfort. It appears that this may have been, essentially, acid
reflux, and fortunately the treatment Memorial Sloan Kettering prescribed –
increasing my anti-acid reflux medications, including the old standby,
Pepto-Bismol – seemed to address my symptoms. But what was most surprising
about this was the comment of the MSK nurse, who told me that any use of
the pump, even with inert substances, can cause difficulties like this. This I
suppose is further proof that you can’t fool Mother Nature – if you put a
foreign object inside your abdomen and inject things through it to your liver,
your body may acquiesce but it won’t necessarily be pleased.
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Still, if the scan results are good, I’ll be happy to
continue treating acid reflux!
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