The Good & The Bad

It's Day 15 of the first cycle for the clinical trail, and thankfully everything seems to be going smoothly! I've been able to live life pretty normally since I have a lot of energy and minimal side effects. Makes for a happy girl! That is, now that today's appointments are over...



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First of all, I found out too late that I wasn't suppose to take the morning dose of my meds until after I had my lab work done at the hospital. So instead of getting everything out of the way today, I'll be up at Moffitt again for multiple blood draws over a five hour time period. Can't wait. :/

I had to have another skin biopsy done this morning.  There's a nice matching circle on my other leg where they took the skin sample from for the research study.  Luckily the skin biopsy procedure isn't too bad...unlike the needle biopsy I would encounter later.

After the last needle biopsy that I had on Day 1 was so horrible and painful, I requested to either be sedated or put under during the procedure.  They decided to just give me a sedative about 30 minutes prior and began numbing the area (left auxilla).  The procedure uses an ultrasound to guide a needle to the tumor in order to remove a piece for research purposes.  Here's the good news -- the tumors are all looking smaller! (So exciting since that means this medicine seems to be working). But bad news for me today was the fact that the tumors got smaller made it near impossible for them to get the samples they need.  After several failed attempts and some extreme pain to me, they finally decided to stop and only continue if I'm under limited anesthesia. Glad this conclusion came after I was traumatized for a second time with this procedure...ughhh!

Afterwards I had to go across the street over to the Florida Eye Clinic to have my 15 day checkup on my eyes.  All went well as there is no swelling or significant changes thus far. That finished up the day and we were homeward bound!

 I'll be back up at Moffitt tomorrow and then again for a morning blood draw on Wednesday. Busy week for me! I am excited to know that there seems to be some tumor shrinkage. Makes all this other crap seem worth it!  We will know more official results when I get CT scans done before starting Cycle 2. Guess it just shows you gotta take the good with the bad! :)