Terry Knows Best

I started to feel a little better Sunday night and it continued yesterday. I was beginning to think that maybe my discomfort was being caused more by the chemo than the ascites and now the chemo was wearing off. But Terry urged me to set up the paracentesis pointing out that Christmas was coming and I would not want it to get worse and not be able to have it done. Boy was she right! Yesterday I got the paracentesis scheduled for today. As the day went on yesterday I began to feel the effects of the fluid more and more but it was manifesting itself as leg pain and shortness of breath rather than the gastric discomfort I felt over the weekend. Today the procedure was done and they removed 5 liters of fluid, one more than three weeks ago. And now I feel great. It's amazing what a difference it makes. Thanks Trrrr. I'm hoping the test results again show no malignancies in the fluid. I have a theory that the chemo agent epirubicin, perhaps in conjunction with the herceptin which we discontinued, is causing my heart not to pump propery. That's really not theoretical becuase we know that from the MUGA test. The theoretical part is that it is my heart not pumping correctly that may be causing the ascites. So I'm going to schedule an appointment with Dr. George to suggest we discontinue the Epirubicin now. CEA counts show it's not working anyway. There are two more chemo regimens I'm familiar with we haven't tried yet and I'd like to give her time to consider them and set them up. And then maybe we can get the ascites to stop. The PET scan next week will come at a perfect time for a baseline if we make a change. Maybe this is all wishful thinking but you gotta have hope. And you gotta carry on. --------------------------------------