Second recurrence

In April my oncologist let me stop chemotherapy with Xeloda. My scans and CEA had been normal for six months and we hoped that I could remain disease-free without continued treatment.

It felt nice to be off of chemo, finally able to spend more time at work and play without the old two-week chemo ickiness cycle. I was still pretty tired and had lingering side effects, but I expected those problems to improve over the coming year.

One day in June I noticed a new pain or fullness in my rectum – nothing too surprising with all the surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation that it had been through. A few days later I developed a 101 degree fever that came and went for the next ten days. My oncologist prescribed an antibiotic and sent me for my three-month PET/CT scan as well as a sigmoidoscopy.

The sigmoidoscopy came first. My colorectal surgeon, the one who diagnosed my colon cancer in 2004 (to his own great surprise), said he saw another tumor like before. It was growing from the site where my colon and rectum were reattached, about an inch wide and beginning to interfere with the passage of stool. He also saw evidence that there was something outside the colon pressing inward.


Two days later I had the PET/CT scans. They showed a one-inch tumor at the reattachment site and a two-inch tumor in the adjacent soft tissue.

This news is very disappointing. Just as I was recovering from eighteen months of chemotherapy plus radiation and making plans for the future, it's all spoiled and I'm thrown back into treatment.

We are now trying oxaliplatin, a drug that was given as part of my first chemotherapy but which my body hasn't seen in three years. We're also throwing in Xeloda and Avastin again for good measure. My radiation oncologist wants to irradiate the tumors to prevent bleeding and protect my leg nerves from intrusion into my tail bone. We'll start five weeks of daily radiation in late August.

Aside from the nausea of my first dose of oxaliplatin I'm feeling pretty good. Energetic, clear headed, strong, and mostly pain-free. But I'm unhappy to be returning to the drag of chemotherapy, especially one harsher than before. And I'm worried that with no new miracle drugs these tumors will become resistant and my health will be all downhill from here.

Writing about cancer

I haven't published anything here in a while. At first that was because I had just finished with Xeloda and wanted to focus on non-cancer things for a while.

Later I did write some partial posts but never finished them. I felt that they sounded too optimistic, too preachy, or too pathetic, so I wasn't comfortable sharing them.

Then in June I felt sick for a couple weeks and got busy with tests to figure out what's wrong. I have some news to share from those in a few days, after I know more about what's going to happen.

In the meantime, I was pointed to a blog called My Cancer. It's by Leroy Sievers, a journalist dealing with advanced colon cancer. It's frightening for me to read his recent posts as he's suffering from the effects of widespread metastases that are likely to be in my future.

But it's an interesting, voluminous, and insightful blog. He even has a post on this same topic called Put On a Happy Face?.