Anyone diagnosed with cancer and who has  undergone chemo, either oral or intravenous, knows that the cure can often be worse than the cancer. For those lucky enough to have a chance of going into remission, it is as small but painful price to pay. For those unlucky enough to be undergoing palliative chemo, it is a very different case. Palliative chemo is usually ongoing, one is on it from the time of diagnosis until the end.

The side affects of the chemo vary from drug to drug and patient to patient. Two people taking the same drug may have vastly different side affects. Some are able to weather the side affects better than others, but even those with minimal side affects have unpleasant results.  It is just a matter of degrees. In my case,  the Sutent has a host of side affects; being extremely tired, pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, tenderness of the skin on the bottom of ones feet and palm of ones hands, loss of appetite, weight loss, shortness of breath, depression and anxiety, and hair loss- that being the least of my concerns. I suffer from seven side affects. On a very good day, there are no side affects.  A bad day has all seven.

Oral Sutent is administered for 28 days with a two week break and then the cycle repeats. The deeper into the chemo regime, the more pronounced the side affects become. Week one and two are manageable, week three and four are much less so. Week five, as the chemo exits the body, the effects lessen and week six is the best of all. Out of six weeks, there are three that are manageable.  Every day is an adventure, a surprise, waking up in the morning one never knows which of the side effects will manifest themselves that day. Will it be none, one, or all seven? There are days that I am physically unable to leave the house. It is on those days I wonder which is worse, the cancer or the chemo?

There are drugs to combat the side affects of the chemo, but those drugs also have side effects.  It is always a balancing act, take too little of the drugs and they are ineffective, take too much and it causes a new and different issue. Even after being on Sutent for a year, I have been unable to accurately determine the precise dosage of medicines to combat the side effects.

My Oncologist is very pleased, with not only my treatment,  but with my ability to cope with the side affects of the Sutent. Personally, I am less pleased with my ability to weather the side affects but I have no base line to measure them against. Over the last 18 months, I have been forced to modify my entire life to accommodate the disease.

The problem with Sutent is that, after a period of time, the drugs lose their effectiveness.  Essentially the body, the cancer cells figure out what the drugs are doing and figure out how work around them. At that point they are rendered inaffective and the tumors start to grow at their normal rate, in some cases at an accelerated rate. When that happens, one is forced to go to Plan B. For my type of cancer there are essentially four different type of drugs. Unfortunatley Plan B doesn't work as effectively as Plan A, Plan C not as well as Plan B and that assumes that one's body will not have an adverse reaction to any of the drugs, an anaphylactic reaction.  If they do,  then one may be forced to jump from Plan A to Plan C.

I first started taking the Sutent, I was told that it would work for perhaps 6-9 cycles. The fact that I have done as well with Sutent is a blessing. Unfortunately during my last visit with my oncologist, he said the drug was becoming less effective that some of the smaller tumors were growing at a much more rapid rate. After my next full round of chemo, he is going to be forced to switch to Plan B, to switch me to a different chemo medicine. I currently have the balance of my current treatment, 10 days, then a 14 day break then another 28 days of chemo before I learn my fate. Although I don't feel any worse than I did last week, there is an obvious shift in my overall health in addition to a greater level of anxiety.....

More on this after my next visit with my oncologist

This will be my only post this week. Next week I will revert back to posting twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday.