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06/05/2006: "Spinal Metastases"
From my reading it is apparent that the backbone is a common site for cancers to spread. Metastases is the spreading of cancer from its original location to other organs in the body. Seventy percent of all cancer patients develop metastatic disease and of those, 40% are located in the spine.
The results of this last scan did show some positives as the cancer has not spread other places and the multitude of lung nodules, though still present, are not growing. My focus now is to see what we can do about this tumor in my 7th vertebrae. There are a couple of options.
I could go back on chemotherapy (probably my doctor’s recommendation), I could have radiation (yet to explore side effects) or I could opt for surgery. At this point, I am not interested in returning to chemo. I was reading in a book this weekend that certain drugs in your chemo-cocktail can so deplete your immune system that it actually allows the cancer to spread. That was an eye opener. Especially since one of the drugs mentioned is one that has been present in both treatment sessions. I even carried this one around for three days every two weeks while it slowly pumped into me.
I have been concerned as to why, after showing no tumors going into treatment, two months after treatment, it had spread to my lungs and spine. The doctor’s explanation was that it might have spread faster without chemo. I got very sick during that first round, ending up in the hospital for severe dehydration and a blood infection. The latter required me to self administer IV antibiotics three times a day for two months. Think my immune system may have been compromised?
So chemo is out and I am now looking at Radiation and Surgery. Surgery can leave me paralyzed so that too, does not look attractive. I am not excited about the potential of radiation as it can be quite damaging. Also, colon cancer is considered a radioresistant tumor. So it does not react well to radiation.
I did find a new technique that sounds interesting - stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS). This is a precise laser radiation treatment can avoid the spinal column and works with radioresistant tumor. There is a new device called CyberKnife (http://www.accuray.com) that was created here in Sunnyvale. The treatment requires one to three outpatient visits and the patient does not experience pain. This new high-tech device maximizes pin-pint radiation to the tumor and avoids surrounding healthy tissue.