Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog

(Pretend that I'm giving a speech.) Family, friends, blog readers I haven't met yet, and fellow cancer ninjas: Six months ago this week, I was in an emergency room learning that I have metastatic cancer.  So much has happened during this time and here's where things stand: My Cancer Status: For as sick as I am, I'm doing pretty well. I've been taking a newer oral chemotherapeutic agent, Xalkori, for the last four months.  Initially the side effects were really rough, but over time I've adjusted to most of them and have figured out how to work around the few remaining ones.  CT scans, six weeks ago, showed my lung tumor and the tumors in my liver are all shrinking. The mets to my bones were about the same - thankfully not worse.  Most all of my labs have returned to normal, or close to normal, including liver function tests. My energy level began to improve a few weeks after starting on Xalkori, but I still get tired easily and find myself needing to sleep a lot...

I have really never thought about myself in the context of miracles, but my story below sort of feels like one to me.  It started about four months ago and I haven't blogged about it yet because it's a long, complicated story and I'm not sure I've completely processed it.  Pan-cancer genetic testing is done on tumor cells looking for any and all DNA mutations known to cause cancer.  This testing will also tell which chemotherapeutic agents will work to inhibit cancer cell growth and which chemo agents won't help.  Early on, I declined pan-cancer testing because I didn't want to know if I had a type of cancer that wouldn't respond to any known chemotherapies.  However, after getting the bad news that my first chemo drugs weren't working, I decided it was time for me to have the test.  So in mid-February I had a second liver biopsy. My oncologist suggested that we send out samples to two labs.  The first lab, Lab-A, could get us results on two lung tumor...