Sore skin

After the third of three doses of Abraxane (one cycle) on Monday, the port removal site hurt very seriously and so did my throat. Maybe a six on my personal one to ten scale?

Enough so that I hardly slept that night, even after taking three hydrocodone tabs. I thought maybe Rik had shared a cold with me since my throat felt scratchy. On Tuesday I waited for my afternoon appointments to get Neulasta and to see the wound care nurse. By then it still hurt a lot and with the nurse poking around it hurt even more. I took more hydrocodone after she finished, she called Dr G, and I went to see him.

Dr G ordered an xray to be sure the PICC line was still good, which evidently it is. He decided that all the sore skin, even in my throat, was due to Abraxane. It might be that I've finally had my personal maximum of taxanes. However, he was very excited about news from the American Society of Clinical Oncologists' conference and has a clinical trial in mind for me regarding microsatellite instability and doing a different genetic testing of my cancer. (There will be an article in the New England Journal of Medicine on this but he read an early online version on Monday. ASCO is amazing, Dr G is amazing, and I have no idea how he remembers it all. He didn't even know he would see me on Tuesday!) We also briefly discussed androgen receptor testing.

We've talked about Keytruda and Opdivo, the new drugs given to melanoma and colorectal patients with amazing success. They're related to treating microsatellite instability. It's a whole new world of medicine out there again!

In the meantime I put on a fentanyl patch for the pain, swished some GelClair and tried to gargle to reach the pain in the back of my throat. I didn't ask permission but did 'fess up to The Amazing & Wonderful Nurse Jacque. She can confer with Dr G and tell me to back off but it did hurt SO MUCH and now I feel better.

As Dr G has said from the beginning of our relationship, if I can hold on long enough there will always be something new coming down the road. Luckily for me, my indolent (i.e. lazy, slow-growing) cancer has given me almost thirteen years of life with metastatic disease.