This Machine Killed Cancer

Hello from the winter wonderland that is San Francisco!

Shayne saw Dr. Rubenstein yesterday morning. He went over Shayne’s scans and medical history and almost immediately confirmed what I was hoping he’d say - he strongly recommended **against** brain radiation. He added that, in fact, a new chemo based regimen showed better long term results than the traditional radiation protocol.

He suggested that Shayne go another round with Methotrexate and then do a high intensity dose of Cytarabine (chemo) that will most like put him in the hospital for a month, but will consolidate the cancer enough so that he can move onto just getting radiation to his chest followed by an autologous bone marrow transplant. He said that if, after all of that, the cancer still wasn’t gone, then he would try low dose brain radiation, but only as a last ditch effort.

So now we have to decide - do we go with the protocol that our doctor in NC who has seen Shayne all along prescribes or decide to go with the treatment plan that a specialist in California recommends? No one can say 100% which one will be more effective (they probably can’t even say they’re 2% sure) so we mostly have to go with our gut feeling.

After everything I’ve read and researched, I want to delay brain radiation as much as possible in hopes that a cure will come before shooting laser beams anywhere near Shayne’s brain.

The new treatment does come with its own risks. Shayne will have to be in hospital for almost a month, and it will be a much higher does of chemo than the already potent Methotrexate he’s gotten most recently, which means he’ll mostly like go neutropenic and side effects will be more severe. If we decided to choose this new option it will also mean that we’ll be spending even more time in the hospital (about 2 months).  Like the bone marrow transplant, it also carries with it a 5% mortality rate.

We also found out this past week that Shayne’s newest scans show that the tumors in his brain have shrunk, but the original tumor in his chest has started to grow. This means that we have to make a decision as to which route we want to go as soon as we get back to NC on Monday. 

Anyone know a good psychic?