Sorry it’s been so long for an update. I just don’t have much energy and I’m doing most of these text to type so please excuse the typos they drive me nuts so know that they would never be me doing them.
After meeting with Dr. Satelli and realizing we’re both not on the exact same page, we agreed to disagree and move on to treatment number four. This new drug is called Enhertu and it was originally created for patients with HER2 positive breast cancer. My breast cancer is hormone positive, so not the same. But I do fall into the category of HER2 low. A study was recently done on patients that have always been considered HER 2 low or negative utilizing Enhertu as the main chemotherapy drug. And it has had pretty positive results in HER2 low patients.
We’re going to hope for the same thing for me. In the meantime, I had some things I needed to do to prepare to start the Enhertu. It is an infusion drug. I will take it once every 21 days. I will lose my hair. So took about that my niece shaved it the other day, so I beat that bitch to the punch line.
I have to have an echocardiogram tomorrow because this can be heart damaging. When I saw my NP, Jennifer, she was very worried about my increasing nausea. That wasn’t being handled by my meds. She was concerned it was coming from the liver tumors. Whereas typical nausea meds don’t help in that case, she prescribed me a new drug, which is actually an old drug but one that seems to work really well for people that have liver lesion related nausea. And of course there’s a nationwide shortage on it. Yay. Sam’s Club, fortunately had enough to fill a month for me so that will get me through the first two cycles. If there still a shortage we’ll just change the dosage. Because my labs are so low right now as far as hemoglobin, red blood cells and platelets, I will have a lower threshold for chemo side effects from this drug. Basically meaning that people whose counts are in normal range would suffer less severe side effects than I likely will. Jennifer didn’t want that to be a concern for me so I decided to give me some fluids and nausea medicine and office yesterday and let it run over an hour. Let me take a nap and I felt much better afterwards. If we can stay ahead of the nausea, vomiting, puking stage, then hopefully when I do get to that point, it won’t be as tough. Not a lot of major side effects with this drug other than the ones I’ve discussed above, which I am happy to hear about.
My insurance is working on approving everything in the next couple days and if that works out the way, we expect I will go in Friday to the cancer center have some labs drawn. There are specific labs that have to meet certain levels before I can be given the Enhertu and they need a couple days for some of those to come back . If everything is good, I will get my first dose of Enhertu next Tuesday. Keep your fingers crossed. I’m looking forward to doing anything I can to get more of this cancer gone and get some energy back to fight.
ps- just got the best news ever from Hailey….. she’s an official doctor of Physical Therapy! Found out she passed her boards today! Congrats, Dr. Ladner!
Love and hugs
K
