At my office visit I found out a lot more about my situation.
I had been avoiding contact with anyone as much as possible because the fact sheets for the chemo drugs I am taking say to avoid contact with crowds or anyone who might be sick. I asked the doctor and he said that only applies if my white blood cell count is low and it wasn’t.
I get blood tests before every treatment and will be able to tell when or if that happens.
I signed paperwork to allow a lab in Arizona to test tissue from my liver biopsy for a certain biomarker. If I have it I am eligible for Imunotherapy. I should know in about a week.
I also asked about the 22 treatments. He said they will monitor to see how things go. I am figuring that they just put in the referral till the end of the year to make it easier for them.
He also confirmed that my cancer is considered Stage 4.
Here is a page web site from the lab that is doing the testing that has a lot of information: http://www.mycancer.com/
More people are beating cancer today than ever before. Research shows that half of all people diagnosed with cancer will live with their disease for more than 10 years – an all-time high in the history of cancer treatment.3 Forty years ago, women with breast cancer had a 40 percent chance of surviving 10 years post-diagnosis. Now, women have an estimated 78 percent chance of surviving at least a decade. Similarly, the 10-year survival for men with testicular cancer has improved from 69 to 98 percent since the 1970s. For those diagnosed with malignant melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, the 10-year survival rate has jumped from 46 to an astounding 89 percent.4
Some studies estimate that after an initial treatment fails to produce a response, as many as 95 percent of cancer patients will not respond to the next treatment suggested by conventional methods. However, increasing numbers of oncologists are taking advantage of new precision medicine tools to change the way they treat cancer. This new approach, called molecular profiling, characterizes cancers according to their unique molecular “signatures”, and not simply based on the origin of the tumor.