Cancer Update #3

 An update on my husband's cancer diagnosis.

See previous updates:
- Cancer
- Update #1
- Update #2

In my last update, James had just started the BRAF inhibitors to try to slow down his cancer.

Since then, James had scans to see what was going on with the tumor & if his cancer had spread.  Thankfully, his cancer is still contained in the same area.  

We were transferred to a new doctor who went over the scans with us.  It looked like on the scans that the cancer wasn't growing as rapidly as before, which meant the BRAF inhibitors were somewhat working.  James was going to continue on the BRAF inhibitors for the near future.

 

 

 

 

 

Then James went in for blood work.  While his labs looked great, there was one number that was concerning.  When he had his first tumor, that number was totally off the charts.  It finally went back into the normal range when he had surgery to remove the first tumor &  started the BRAF medication.  Now the number is slowly trying to climb back up.  The number basically means that the cancer is not responding very well to the BRAF inhibitors anymore.

Because the BRAF inhibitors are not responding at the rate we had hoped, it is time to try another treatment.  The hope is to shrink the tumor as much as possible & as quickly as possible.

The new treatment will be immunotherapy.  James will go for treatments every 3 weeks at first & then it will eventually switch to every 4 weeks.  Immunotherapy basically boosts the immune system to recognize & destroy cancer cells.  We are hoping he responds to these treatments & it will destroy the cancer in his body.

This is the same treatment James was going to be doing in the clinical trial.  In the clinical trial, some participants would receive another immunotherapy drug in addition but everyone would receive the actual immunotherapy drugs.

We are hopeful this treatment will work for James & the cancer tumor will shrink & the melanoma will not spread to any other areas in his body.  He has another scan in December but hopefully we'll start to see the tumor shrink before then.