Chemotherapy

Tom will be starting a new chemo treatment this week. It's called Folfiri, but every time I hear it pronounced it sounds like Full Fury. Sounds appropriate.  The first chemo was call Folfox or 5FU which also sounds appropriate. FU

We have learned that they never repeat a chemo treatment.  Once you finish one treatment they will not repeat it but may change one of the ingredients.  I haven't figured out why yet. We met with Dr. DaGraca and looked at Tom's PET scan together, which showed that the inoperable tumor on his sacrum, which was dormant for a while, is showing molecular activity again.  The Folfiri is supposed to stop that cancer from growing and spreading.

Folfiri is made up of Fluorouracil, an antimetabolite,  which interferes with cells DNA and RNA.  It targets rapidly dividing cells, which cancer cells are, but so are hair follicles, the lining of the gastrointestinal tract and bone marrow cells. Leucovorin a "reduced folic acid" enhances the effectiveness of the Fluorouracil.   So the chemo kills the cancer cells and keeps them from reproducing but also kills many healthy fast dividing cells.  The cancer cells affected can't repair themselves, but the healthy cells can.   That's why they wait around two weeks before the next treatment.  It gives the healthy cells time to repair and rebuild. Tom had these two drugs last summer and they did get rid of the rectal tumor he had, but this time the third drug will be Irinotecan.

Irinotecan is called an antineoplastic or cytotoxic. It belongs to a class of chemotherapy drugs called plant alkaloids. Irinotecan specifically interferes with the action of topoisomerase enzymes which control the manipulation of the structure of DNA necessary for replication.  With this drug there is more of a chance that Tom will loose his hair and maybe have some digestive issues. We won't know for sure until he starts the treatment.

One difference this time is that they will train me to disconnect him at home and put everything into a hazard bag until the return for the next treatment.  He will get the Irinotecan first for a couple hours and then come home with the Fluorouracil pumping for two days until I disconnect him.

So that's what's coming up.  We will just have to wait and see how Tom responds.

I just spent too long looking for chemotherapy clip art, photos and cartoons to liven up this post. I could not find anything that I deemed appropriate at this time, so you get to see the rabbit in my yard and a flower  I saw on a recent walk.