Posted 9/29/2012 3:15 PM (GMT 0)
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted so I thought I would give an update on what is going on with Eric. As of the middle of 2011 his PSA started to rise rapidly from .8 in June to 2.7 in October. This alarming rise prompted a trip to Rochester, MN in November 2011 for the C-11 Choline scan at Mayo. Unfortunately the scan did not yield any information regarding location of disease. At this point I began researching Dr. Michael Dattoli’s DART protocol that could be obtained as a patient of Dr. Charles “Snuffy” Myers. By the time we traveled to Los Angeles for our scheduled visit to Dr. Leibowitz’/Dr. Turner’s office in January PSA had risen to around 3.8. A change to the anti-angiogenics, specifically the Revlimid dosage was significantly increased and Eric’s PSA has been stable at around 3.8 to 4.2 or so ever since.
We had our first appt with Dr. Myers in March, traveled to Orlando to get the Feraheme scans at Sand Lake Institute in April, back to Dr. Bahn for another color Doppler ultrasound and to see Dr. Leibowitz’office in Los Angeles in June for regular visit. PSA still stable, no CTCs.
The Feraheme scans were able to detect a fair amount of cancer in the nodes around the iliac artery and in the retroperitoneal area as well as in a couple of of femoral nodes. The results of the scan were validated by performing a needle biopsy on the left femoral node which came back positive for cancer. Since Eric had already had salvage radiation shortly after his surgery in 2007, the femoral nodes are not a candidate for further radiation so it was recommended that these be removed surgically. Dr. Dattoli recommended Dr. Louis Kavoussi on Long Island,NY to perform the surgery. We scheduled surgery for Wednesday September 26 with Dr. Kavoussi at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center. We headed up to LI on Monday Sept 24 and met with Dr. Kavoussi on Tuesday. Unfortunately it seems that his staff didn’t fully grasp the exact location of the nodes that were to be removed and the laparascopic surgery that was planned was not possible so back home we came to do more research to find the right surgeon for the job.
Eric is currently scheduled to begin radiation in Sarasota with Dr. Dattoli at the end of November and this will likely need to be postponed for at least a month while we get the surgery taken care of. The surgery needs to be done prior to radiation so that the cancerous nodes can be submitted for molecular profiling.
So, almost a year since we started this particular leg of our journey and had no idea how long it would take to coordinate everything but we are on a good path and will get there eventually. Thankfully the PSA stability this year has allowed pursuit of this treatment plan with a slightly lessened sense of urgency.
Again, I just wanted to post an update in case any of this information proves helpful to anyone.
Amy