Further Treatment Options....

Anyway while we were in hospital we saw Dr. Haynes, my consultant. He said the delay in treatment wouldn't have caused any lasting effects and the returning symptoms could be due to a number of things and he didn’t seem too worried. In fact after today’s phone call saying I need a blood transfusion tomorrow I think it was probably more due to my counts being low than the lymphoma which is a relief!

He explained there are now 3 scenarios arising from the GEM-P treatment:

1. It has worked really well and shrunk the tumor down a lot

2. It has partially worked and has shrunk it down a reasonable amount

3. It hasn't worked at all

Out of the 3 option 2 is the most likely, option one isn't that likely and option 3, although a possibility due to how well I've been feeling is unlikely too.They plan to give me at least another cycle of this GEMP chemo, possibility 2 more. But this will happen after they have attempted to get stem cells. After the second cycle they will do a PET scan to access the situation.

Now there are 4 options available from these 3 scenarios.

1. GEMP has worked well. They manage to get stem cells form this cycle. They will then give me the 2 more and these 3 cycles together manage to shrink the tumor right down, enough to hold the disease until they can get a donor and do the bone marrow transplant.

2. The GEMP cycles work partially, shrinking down the tumor to a reasonable size. They successfully get stem cells after the first cycle. They then use these stem cells in order to give me a stem cell transplant (so high dose chemo then put stem cells back into me) to hold the disease until a donor is found and ready and I am also ready for the Bone marrow transplant.

3. The GEMP cycle works partially and shrinks down the tumor to a reasonable size but the disease starts growing back - and they CAN’T get stem cells. In this scenario they abandon the stem cell option and instead would give me ‘mini-beam’ which is a type of intensive chemo- if the chemo they give you in stem cell transplant is 10/10, this is 9.5/10 BUT although it would wreck my stem cells so they wouldn’t be able to collect them you don’t need to put stem cells back in me to recover from this. So essentially its just really strong chemo! And this would hopefully again hold the disease until the donor and I am ready for a BMT.

4. The GEMP doesn’t really work that well and/or they try the mini -beam or the SCT and neither of those are very successful they would give me Radiotherapy but this is a last resort due to the risk of further cancers in the future and the damage it could cause to my organs later in life because of where my tumor is! Again the idea is to hold it until I can get a BMT

So they are now the 4 options, all leading hopefully to a bone marrow transplant. Obviously things need to start going to plan to get there! Options 2 and 3 are the more likely. Option one isn't very likely and although option 4 could happen they want to try and avoid it! They are going to do a chest x-ray soon as well, maybe tomorrow or Friday just to see if there is any change but they said if there isn’t not too worry too much cos it could have shrunk in the inside or something not from the outside. The doctor agreed it must be doing something to make me feel so well!!

That’s the situation as it stands at the moment anyway…..there’s just a couple of posts left until I’m up to date totally…