Plan B

Today we met with Dr. Fisher and Trish Murphy (oncological nurse practioner) about a new treatment regimen for Beckett. Allergic reactions to carboplatin are pretty common, and they are usually able to desensitize patients to the medicine over time. Beckett's allergic reaction, however, was severe enough that desensitizing him to carboplatin is not an option.

So, we are looking at a new chemotherapy drug and treatment plan. Dr. Fisher went over some different plans with us that included oral medications (not a good idea, especially with Cassie being pregnant) and stopping treatment altogether. What Dr. Fisher recommended was going to another IV treatment, the old one that was standard in the 80's before carboplatin and vincristine became the standard treatment for this kind of low-grade tumor.

The older drug is called Dactinomycin (or Actinomycin-D, or Cosmegen) and it has a success rate roughly equal to the other treatment we were doing, and it will also be given in conjunction with Vincristine. The downsides to this medication is that it is much more like conventional chemotherapy. Beckett will go to the hospital every day for a week, although the treatments should be shorter. Beckett will get more sick and will take more time to recover after a week of chemo. His white cell counts will likely get quite low; they hadn't budged on the other treatment. The side effects are roughly the same except that it is much more likely that his hair will fall out.

The silver lining is that we will have slightly more time weeks off of treatment, and the overall treatment course is shorter (30 weeks), so we should still finish slightly before we had planned to. Beckett will probably start not next week but the week after.

We haven't posted a lot to the blog because chemotherapy had become pretty routine, but this certainly changes things quite a bit. On the plus side, Cassie's pregnancy is going really well so far and she is already past the point where Beckett was born.