Oct 20, 2017 06:50PM - edited Oct 21, 2017 04:52AM by zarovka
Mom - It is a good question what I mean by Rads. I mean something like Stereotactic Body Radiation Treatment (SBRT). SBRT is a type of radiation that is tuned to provoke an immune response. There may be others.
The RO may feel that she's going to get an adequate immune response with the approach she is taking. You do want them thinking about it and talking about it and explaining to you whether their radiation is going to release neo-antigens. I recalled that some kind of PDL-1 inhibitor is lined up so this radiation treatment is a huge opportunity. They may be thinking this already.
I don't know if the Y90 provokes the immune response in the same way. It doesn't matter as long as she is getting radiation somewhere that floods her system with cancer neoantigens and gives her newly activated immune system something to attack.
Grannax - I've been thinking about your rashes and my rashes . I kinda think my current rashes are a response to the cancer being attacked. These rashes occurred only AFTER the liver mets got hit with chemo and hyperthermia. My skin sensitivity is most likely the liver dealing with the carnage of a dying tumor. I would not be surprised if that is the case for you as the Y90 effect takes a while to play out.
It's a lot like TM's ... more of an indicator that something is going on than exactly what is going on. We interpret them from context and experience. I am expecting you will find that your liver just got upset when it had to deal with the mess after a Y90 treatment ... and took it out on your face. Your liver is likely hard at work tidying things up. We'll know with time.
On a related topic my CEA is developing into a useful took to monitor my cancer. CA 15-3 and 27.29 have been useless for me. Depends what antigens your cancer sheds. Oddly, CEA is rarely reliable with MBC, but here are my last CEA numbers in context. After doubling monthly for several months, my CEA dropped slightly after 2 weeks of low dose chemo combined with hyperthermia.
The purpose of the initial treatment is to down-regulate immunosuppression and not treat the cancer directly. The chemo doses I was taking are not considered an effective dose for treating cancer. The hyperthermia doses I am getting are sufficient to kill cancer directly. Difficult to parse what is causing what, but it is sure nice to see my CEA did not double again.
>Z<