New Chemo, New Hope

Yesterday, I had my first dose of chemo regimen number five. My blood count and echocardiogram were good (yay!), so I was able to start chemo straight away.

This new chemo drug I'm getting, Liposomal Adriamycin, is from a family of drugs I haven't tried yet, mostly because they're cardio-toxic, especially in combination with Herceptin, which I was on for a year. Liposomal Adriamycin is the same as traditional Adriamycin, but is delivered in a way that is less toxic to the heart. It's much more expensive but given the risks I may be averting, it could be worth the trade-off. It sounds to me like this could be the drug that works. I have a good feeling about it.

Meanwhile, I've discovered a red dot on the skin in the middle of my chest, right on the sternum. The dot was about two millimeters wide when I first noticed it a few days ago. I thought it might just be skin irritation from the button on my shirt or something that hit me there. But today I noticed the dot had gotten a few millimeters wider and is slightly raised on the surface of the skin.

This is similar to the dot that appeared on my right chest where the biopsy needle went in when I was first diagnosed with cancer two years ago. At that time I pointed the red dot out to my surgeon and he said it was not cancer-related. Two weeks later, that dot was a red lump. A biopsy of that lump showed it was cancer and I had to have that surgically removed.

Also, the little lump near the red dot that I discovered yesterday felt a bit bigger today. It's pretty scary how fast this cancer seems to be growing - so fast that I can feel and see the difference from one day to the next, and all this with the naked eye and my fingers tips.

I'll keep a close eye on my lumps and that red skin dot and watch for evidence of this new chemo working. The good news is, I won't have to spend thousands of dollars on scans to see if the chemo is working. I can just look down and feel the lumps with my fingers. I'm not due for another dose for three weeks, so self-examination will be very important on this new chemo schedule.