Thursday, June 11, 2009

Changing strategy.....

I got my CT scan and blood analysis result today. Well, after more than 10 months of alternative treatment, intravenous chemotherapy, and targeted drugs, the tumor is still there and still maintained at about the same size. Although the treatments did not managed to shrink the tumor, but thanks God, at least I am lucky the tumor is still localized, not metastasized, and had not spread to other organs. On the positive side, at least the chemotherapy and targeted drugs managed to control the tumor growth. Praise the Lord.

However, fighting cancer is not about falling back into the comfort zone to maintain status quo. I need to change my treatment strategy to overcome the cancer cells.

I am having a localized advance tumor at my pancreas, to move beyond controlling the growth of the tumor, I need to look into the possibility of targeted localized treatment with minimum damages to other vital organs. For the time being, 3D Conformal Radiotherapy together with oral chemo seemed to be my best practical option. With 3D conformal radiotherapy, the tumor is mapped in 3 dimension, and multiple radiation beams are then precisely aimed at the mapped tumor, minimizing the damages to other normal tissues.

I was told that the hospital need to feed the images from the CT Scan result into the computer to created a 3 dimensional view of the targeted treatment areas. The computer then design multiple high dosage of radiation beams into an area precisely conforming to the size of the tumor and its vicinity. The hospital will need to have approximately 2 to 3 days to plan the treatment before the first radiotherapy session can be delivered. After that, I will have to go to the hospital on almost daily basis for a minimum of 35 sessions.

My next action is now to source for a hospital that have 3D Conformal Radiotherapy facility or Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy facility. At the moment, University Hospital, Pantai Medical Centre, Subang Jaya Medical Centre, and Nilai's National Cancer Institute have these facilities. Over the next two days, I will have to decide which hospital I want to use to implement this new strategy.

I hope the good Lord will help me make a wise decision on which hospital to use.

So, it looks like over the next one and a half month I will be stationing myself in the battleship again to engage the cancer cells in the battleground again. This time, I will take no prisoner..... So, you nasty mutant cells, you are on the wrong side of my book, your days are numbered.......

1 comment:

ireneloh said...

we will cry out shamelessly to our lord, go down on bended knees and pray for a miracle cos there's nothing impossible with Him.
Love from the chemor gang.
Take care.