Monday 19 October 2009

Questions, questions

Time to go to hospital again tomorrow to see if Steve's white blood cell count has improved sufficiently to continue treatment. We have our doubts about the likelihood of that happening as he's been fighting off a cold most of the week and that must have taken its toll on his immune system (although he appears to have won that particular battle!)


Time to talk to the doctor about the effectiveness of the drug trial compared to what we might have expected to see in terms of tumour size, had he received the standard treatment instead. We want to discuss what other options will be open to him in the future, should he decide to continue and complete the drug trial; assuming there are other options, would it be better to continue treatment with little or no break to ensure continuity and zap Leo whilst he is still relatively small, or hold it in reserve to take action if/when the tumour enlarges/spreads?  


We need to find out what monitoring we can expect once this current round of treatment is finished. Also, will Steve have the opportunity to take part in future drug trials (assuming he fits the eligibility criteria) or is there is a "ration" of one trial per person.  


Asking questions is the easy bit.  Making sense of the answers and reaching an informed decision is rather harder.  



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