22nd June, 2018
First off, Happy Birthday Dad (85!)
Nick's most recent follow-up appointment was today, and it was a decent one. The five rounds of chemo have undubitably worked - Nick's hCG tumour marker has gone from 90,000 + in February to just 9 now. This number could continue to drop over time. Nick was offered more chemo at this point, but it was not a firm recommendation, because Nick's case is unlike anyone in London has ever seen. Generally no one will relapse as many times as Nick has without developing chemo-resistant disease (which is pretty much game over). But, Nick keeps bouncing back. He's been cleared to travel this summer, and has also been given a standing order for weekly blood work. Presumably, they'll be right on him if his hCG starts to spike again, and things will not get out of hand as they did in February.
Looking to the future, Nick recently had genetic sequencing done on his extracted tumour material, in hopes that a mutant "driver" gene can be found which is causing these repeated relapses. If so, then there's some chance that a targeted therapy exists (or will exist in the future) which can arrest the cancer without carpet-bombing the whole body with poison. Evidently, the odds of Nick deriving benefit from this study are only about 5%, but this could increase as time goes on - it's an ongoing study which will search through 50 likely genes now, but 200+ within a few years' time. The initial sequencing should be done in 4-6 weeks.
So, the over-riding message from the Cancer Centre today was that they really don't know why Nick's cancer has gone this way, but for now, no news is good news. We're just going to try to relax and enjoy the summer, and return to work in the fall, keeping our fingers crossed that true remission is in the cards.
Nick's most recent follow-up appointment was today, and it was a decent one. The five rounds of chemo have undubitably worked - Nick's hCG tumour marker has gone from 90,000 + in February to just 9 now. This number could continue to drop over time. Nick was offered more chemo at this point, but it was not a firm recommendation, because Nick's case is unlike anyone in London has ever seen. Generally no one will relapse as many times as Nick has without developing chemo-resistant disease (which is pretty much game over). But, Nick keeps bouncing back. He's been cleared to travel this summer, and has also been given a standing order for weekly blood work. Presumably, they'll be right on him if his hCG starts to spike again, and things will not get out of hand as they did in February.
Looking to the future, Nick recently had genetic sequencing done on his extracted tumour material, in hopes that a mutant "driver" gene can be found which is causing these repeated relapses. If so, then there's some chance that a targeted therapy exists (or will exist in the future) which can arrest the cancer without carpet-bombing the whole body with poison. Evidently, the odds of Nick deriving benefit from this study are only about 5%, but this could increase as time goes on - it's an ongoing study which will search through 50 likely genes now, but 200+ within a few years' time. The initial sequencing should be done in 4-6 weeks.
So, the over-riding message from the Cancer Centre today was that they really don't know why Nick's cancer has gone this way, but for now, no news is good news. We're just going to try to relax and enjoy the summer, and return to work in the fall, keeping our fingers crossed that true remission is in the cards.
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