Dear Dr. Goodman,
I am new to this site and this is my first posting on behalf of a friend of mine. She is 45 years old, diagnosed with stage IIIC in Sept of 2006. She went through the usual protocol that is surgical debulking followed by six cycles of Carbo/Taxol. Her CA 125 came to normal right after the 1st cycle and finally reached 3.5 after six cycles. She just had a recurrence after 14months. Her CA125 slightly shot up to 14 in November but came down to 10 in Feb and her MRI scans in Feb were clean. Her CA125 suddenly shot up from 10 to 358 end of April and a MRI showed a 2cm nodule close to her rectum. We were all quite shocked including herself since she was feeling just great and there were no symptoms at all. She just went through another debulking surgery and they did find "white" coating (as they called it) on her appendix (which was removed), sigmoid colon and a few spots in her pelvis. It all seemed to be focussed on her right side. Her lymph nodes were clean. I must mention that they could not find the primary but said that it really did not matter since the treatment is the same for ovarian, fallopian or peritoneal. Now the following are my questions and would be grateful if you could answer them:
1. They are suggesting the same combo of Taxol/carboplatin again since it has been 14months and she should still be platinum sensitive. Does this make sense? What would you suggest?
2. Now that she has a recurrence, does it mean that she cannot have a long remission again?
3. Would you recommend the vaccine trial that is going on? Also, since it is confined to one region, is radiation an option?
4. I am reading a lot about Gemzar and its effectiveness. I have also heard that some patients have gone into a very long remission with Gemzar. Is this true? I hope it is.
Thanks so much for you time and looking forward to your reply.
Noble123