Concerned about sisters ca #'s and back pain after three yrs of chemo

[chevrolet67]

My sister's last treatment was to treat cancer cells in the lympth nodes that ( I was told) surround the webbing near the bowels. After treatment her ca was a 7. She told me she had another test and the same week her ca went to the forties. The following week she complained of back pain and ca rose to 50. She is suppose to go thru chemo again. Seems like the last treatment only contained the cells and did not allow to spread. After going thru these treatments with no remission at all for three yrs, ( and she was told this would re -happen)what should we expect?

[shaneekirk]

My mom's Dr. explains the duration of the chemo as follows.  She says that the monthly chemo treatments will continue until 1 of 3 things occur.
1. The cancer is in full remission (gone).
2. The cancer is "outsmarting" the chemo and chemo isn't working anymore - Cancer continues to grow.
3. Patient decides that the side effects are too much and decides to stop treatments.

So, although remission is the goal, it was never promised in our case.  If your sister is experiencing #2 above, then, I agree that more tests need to be done, possibly chaning the chemo drugs?

Good luck!

[alanpvegas]

I forgot to ask...what happened with the lymph nodes, did they not remove them?  I've seen study information showing longer survival times when the lymph nodes were removed.

Alan

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Ovarian Cancer Research Website
http://cancer.alanpeto.com/

[alanpvegas]

They will probablly need to do more tests.  CA-125 levels help with monitoring how a treatment works, but are not a diagnosis of anything.  Scans need to be performed and the 'patient' evaulated.  You never treat an 'x-ray' one doctor said, you treat the patient.

A rising CA-125 level is of course a concern, but it has to be evaluated with everything else.  Is chemo going to happen again?  Probablly.  It will also help the oncologist knowing what worked before...perhaps they can use that again.

Chemotherapy is highly ineffective in general in advanced cancer (let's just say stage 3 and 4 for now) because these buggers are everywhere.  The goal is is minor remissions or longer remissions which is both good (because it's a remission) and bad (because it's still there).  A 'cure' (medically meaning a remission of 5+ years) is always possible.

Future 'chemotherapies' are going to the natural route, finally, after poking around by the drug companies first.  Hopefully in under 5 years we will have more options to go from to help traditional chemo.

Alan

------------
Ovarian Cancer Research Website
http://cancer.alanpeto.com/