Hi
I am e mailing on behalf of my mom.She has uterine leiomysarcoma. She has had 2 chest wall surgeries and a hysterectomy. The cancer has mets now into her lungs, neck, lower part of the spine, pelvic bone and small dots near the rib cage. The tumors were relatively small so the doctor started her on doxorubicin. She cannot have doxorubicin and ifosfamide as it involves a stay in hospital and there is covid 19.
She has recently finished her 3rd cycle of doxorubicin and after her lat ct scan this tuesday the doctor says that the tumours have increased in size.She said on average they have increased in size by 15% the tumours have increased 4 milimetres to 6 milimeters. The doctor says the tumours size increase may have been in the 4 weeks before the chemo started and the chemo may still have stabilised the tumors but she is not sure,.We had a CT scan on 9th April and the chemo started on 6th May.The doctor says she wants to my mom to continue doing the remaining 3 cycles of doxorubicin. I am petrified that the chemo is not working and the tumours will increase more..Does anyone have any experience similar to us.
If anyone can please help I would be really grateful.
Hi and welcome to the community, though sorry to hear about your mom.
My wife has Leiomyosarcoma, also in her lungs and had doxorbicin as her first line chemotherapy. In her case this treatment was perhaps a little too effective as some of the cancer cells that died made a hole in the lung and so when she had her mid term scan the main problem was that they found one of her lungs has partially collapsed. She had to stop the chemo and then they had to fix the lung - successfully but tok some time. A while later they saw the cancer was still growing albeit slowly and tried a second chemo of gemcetabine and that seems to have done the trick in that her cancer is now stable and has been for six years.
It took a while for us to learn how to live with cancer and Janice still has a check up every 9 months but she is doing fine.
<<hugs>>
Steve
