Hey, this stuff's got a kick to it...

Hi everybody, Jim here. As I sit at the keyboard writing the blog tonight with one hand (sore arm--flu shot), I realized that the last time I wrote the entry was to deliver the sad news that the IL-2 wasn't going to work. That was just over a week ago, although in some ways it seems like a month. For those of you haven't read the early entries in the blog, IL-2 was considered the only possibility of a complete, permanent cure. It worked by putting the body's immune system in overdrive, and getting the immune system to recognize and fight the cancer cells more effectively. It only worked in about 10% of the cases, so we always knew it was a long shot. We all felt terrible that Linda had to endure the horrible side effects of the treatment, but we're glad she at least tried it, because if she hadn't, we always would have wondered if it might have worked. Everyone in the family, Linda included, agreed we had to try.

So now it's on to a group of drugs referred to as "targeted therapies". These don't directly affect the renal cancer cells either, but in the case of Sutent, they retard the growth of blood vessels around the tumor sites, thereby cutting off or at least decreasing the blood supply that the tumors need to grow. The drug will eventually lose its effectiveness, but in some cases it has prevented tumors from growing for as long as two years. Then it's on to the next drug, and then the one after that. There are three of them approved by the FDA, and the hope is that by the time you've used them all, new treatments will be available. One of the big problems is as always, side effects. Some of them can be so debilitating that you just can't take the drug. Linda started taking Sutent the day after we returned from Boston, so it's been 7 days, and so far she's not experienced any of the really ugly side effects. What's more, it's had some dramatic impact.

On Monday, we noticed that for the last two days, her temperature hadn't been higher than 99 deg. (It was not unusual for it to go as high as 102.4 in the early evening.) So on Tuesday, we decide to stop the Tylenol doses every 5 hours and see what would happen. Remarkably, for the first time in two months, Linda didn't have a fever yesterday or today. We also stopped the nausea medication about the same time, since it looked like her appetite was improving. We then realized that she hadn't been able to sleep much in the afternoon for the past few days, even though she has needed a 2 to 3 hr nap almost daily since this whole ordeal started.

We saw the oncologist today and mentioned all this. He was encouraged and said this is all indicative of the Sutent being effective and the tumors being less active than they were before. Her hemoglobin levels were also way up (11.1, Patty), also a good sign. Then we talked about dosage levels. Linda is taking the maximum dose recommended by the manufacturer, but he cited some studies that indicated more benefit could be gained from even larger doses. Since Linda has so far not had any serious side effects, he increased her dose from 50 to 75 mg/day, which we start tomorrow.

So far I've mentioned all the good news. The fact is that Linda has lost 14 pounds and counting from her pretreatment weight. If her appetite continues to improve, we hope this will start back up, but we'll have to wait and see. And while she feels better, "good" is not the adjective she uses to describe her condition. But after all she's been through, we've decided to celebrate the positive news when we can get it, and deal with the rest as it comes.

As the doctor says, Tails up.

Luv ya all,

Linda and Jim

(and on Friday, we'll be Linda and Jim and Tony and Beth)