I went to UW
Health today for my now weekly immunotherapy, and chemotherapy. All went smooth.
I talked to Dr.
Pophali via phone while at the hospital, and she told me we are in uncharted
waters. Mantle cell lymphoma does not
breach the thecal sack, reaching the central nervous system. Mine has.
Therefore, they have no roadmap on how to go forward with treatment.
After much
consulting with other experts, they decided to treat the cancer in the CNS
separately from the cancer in the rest of my body, in lieu of
systemically.
Since there is
not treatment path to treat MCL in the CNS, she decided to treat that MCL as it
was a lymphoma that was known to penetrate the CNS.
At first the plan
was just to hit it with chemotherapy, methotrexate in this case, but she
decided to go ahead and alternate that with cytarabine, on the advice of other
lymphoma experts.
They continued to
see cancer cells in this past Monday's spinal fluid draw.
This cancer just
continues to do things that it is not supposed to do, and that is not a good
thing. Unless, of course, it goes
away. But it is always going in the
opposite direction.
We had to drive
back from Madison in an intense snowstorm.
We even had trouble getting the transport van through the prison
gates. They struggled to get traction.
No comments:
Post a Comment