We saw the oncologist today. Unfortunately, with the results from last week's scans showing that the tumour in Alison's liver was still growing, it seems that the chemotherapy was not doing its job. And if it's not working, then there is no point in putting Alison's body all through the hassle of side-effects that come with chemo. Thus, we are stopping the treatment.
Next options discussed with the doctor painted three potential pathways.
1) Try an alternate course of chemotherapy and hope that works to reduce the size of the tumour. Thoughts are that given the failure of the first two regimes, probability of this approach being effective are reduced.
2) Start on hormone treatment. Previous tests have indicated that Ali may have a positive response to hormone treatment. It was always intended that she would have hormones at some point, it was just that we were hoping to shrink the tumour first with some chemo and then go with them. The intent of the hormones is to hold the cancer at a stable level for as long as possible.
3) Undergo treatment with SIR-spheres. Essentially an injected radiotherapy treatment where small particles of hair are combined with radioactive material and injected in the blood vessels of the liver (see http://www.sir.net.au/SIR_pi.html for more info). This is a relatively new treatment and it's good to see that it's an Australian innovation. It's not available everywhere so we would need to swap away from our regular doctors for treatment.
Options 2) and 3) are not mutually exclusive and can be undertaken together. At this stage, Ali has already started on the hormones and we are considering whether to push ahead with option 3) as well. The doctors need to confer amongst each other to get their heads straight about what is the best approach and we also need to consider what we think is best. Hopefully, within a week or two we'll know which way to go.
To finish on some good points, there was no evidence of new growths and the doc said that it wasn't the fastest growing cancer she had seen. Ali is generally pretty healthy (cancer notwithstanding) and is getting to feel a bit better now that the last chemo treatment was nearly three weeks ago.