There are doctors, and then...

...and then there are doctors who also are scientists. At the current time, I am thankful to have such a one as this on my team right now in Dr. Mulcahy. The difference, as I see it, is that the scientist is much more willing to think outside the "standard book of treatments", to try things that maybe haven't been tried before if there's a chance they might work to either improve the quality or quantity of my life.

So, mom and I went downtown today to visit with Dr. Mulcahy, and to discuss what options are available given the state of things. The first bit of news, I suppose, is that we will not change our current track. I have had the one treatment of carboplatin/taxol, and have seen some very priliminary "results" in the slight reduction of my pain and softening of my near-surface tumors. If a later CT scan (to be scheduled for sometime after my next treatment) shows that this chemotherapy continues to work everywhere outside the liver, we will go ahead and consider options such as the Theraspheres (discussed in previous posts) for treatment inside the liver.

The second bit of news is that, as Dr. Mulcahy says, there are always other chemo options. It simply depends on how far off the beaten track one is willing to go. The thing is, there's not much of a "beaten track" where appendix cancer is concerned, it being so very rare. But there are several drugs that we might consider trying, should the carboplatin/taxol combo begin to fail us. And perhaps, these drugs might work in the liver...though for the moment, we will probably try and continue the current track, as something that appears more likely to produce results.

What's more, Dr. Mulcahy has good things to say about the program at Vanderbilt, just 3 hours from my home in Knoxville. They have a very active program in clinical trials, which may be an option in the very near future. One interesting thing she had to say is that there may be ways to get on a trial targeted for another cancer, if I can make some sort of "humanitarian use" case. This is to say, if there are colon cancer trials out there that we think promising for my appendix cancer, we might be able to write the producer of the drug, and see if they might approve of its one-time use on something other than colon cancer. To get to that stage, though, I have to get myself into the system at Vanderbilt, a process I expect to begin next week.