Dana Farber Consult

I think I might have confused some of you as to what the DF meeting consisted of... this was not a second opinion meeting, rather than an informative session on various treatments that another doctor might know of that BI doesn't in case the Carbo/Taxol treatment isn't working.

John and I met with Dr. Gandhi, who is a thoracic oncologist at Dana Farber. She reviewed my BI medical records prior to us getting there, and stated that the treatment that I was given at BI would have been the same treatment that would have been given at DF. She agreed that we should wait for the results of my next CT Scan before considering any kind of alternative treatment.

Dr. Gandhi did mention that DF is running a study on thymic cancers, in that some cases might be connected to an abnormal crossing of genes (its a complicated theory with many big words that I don't remember). She is having my biopsy slide sent over from BI to see if my thymic carcinoma could possibly be from this abnormality. If it is in fact the crossing of these particular genes that could have caused my thymic carcinoma there is a treatment that has been around for 5 years that has shown some positive results in patients; her worry is that there will not be enough of the slide to get a conclusive result. I mentioned that I would be willing to do another biopsy at DF if the carbo/taxol treatment wasn't working and we did need to seek an alternative treatment.

We spoke about the pros/cons of Phase I trials, Phase II trials and the difficulty of finding one that relates to my type of cancer, the possibilty and burden of travelling to be involved with a clinical trial, and in general the time and dedication that clincal trials take from a person.

There were a lot of "IFs" because of course we are hoping that the carbo/taxol is indeed working. We will sit down again with Dr. Gandhi at DF again once the CT Scan has been done and we have the results.

I have to say that as a facility, I like BI better and I hope not to have to change; but with my current oncologists and the results of future tests we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

6/18: Chemo treatment #2