Adrian

I'm on board with that. Some oncs are very much against excessive vitamin use/supplementation as they can be "contra-indicated" (i.e. interfere with chemo). Work out, stay healthy, keep us in the loop!

I have a mixed view on this. Nutrition/exercising your way to "beating" cancer is a farce. On the other hand, if you are ABLE to keep your appetite, maintain weight, stay strong/active and able to exercise, then you ARE beating cancer. .. my father iwas committed (his entire adult life) to diet exercise and healthy living. Within a few rounds of chemo and WBR, it was just out of the question. Hope that doesn't sound negative, what I mean to say is, you are certainly better off if you are able to exercise and eat healthily through chemo.

shortly after my dad was off avastin and on to alimta he had a barn burner nose bleed, the likes of which I've never seen. Took five hours to clot and we actually had to go to the ER.

by the way, is she on Zometa for the bone mets? that's standard protocol, but just wanted to be sure.

Johnny, could you fill out your sig line with treatment history? Sounds like your mom's first line treatment was chemo+avastin and your mom progressed on Avastin alone. According to what you wrote, she was stable for some period of time on that regimen. That's good. My dad progressed right through his first line treatment. Obviously news of progression stinks, but failure on first round chemo happens and you have several very interesting options behind it. Alimta is one of the newer approved chemotherapies out there. I know dr. west (www.cancergrace.org) has spoken of some patients being stable with advanced disease for a considerable period of time (years) on Alimta. I think I would ask your onc about the possibility of combining alimta and erbitux (a new non-chemo treatment that was shown this year to increase progression free survivial). I did a quick check on www.clinicaltrials.gov and found that, in fact, there is an enrolling clinical trial for second line alimta + erbitux: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/ ... tux&rank=1 Behind alimta is tarceva which as far as current lung cancer treatment goes is like playing the lottery as when it works --- man does it work. So now is not the time to get weak kneed, though it sounds like your dr. is a bit of a schmuck. Let us know how we can help.

especially for the first round of getting the chest x ray/CT, don't get too hung up on where you get, just get it. Get this looked at now, and hopefully you have "good luck" reserves built up from past, above mentioned "bad luck." Spitting up a little blood doesn't guarantee lung cancer by any stretch, but it is a red flag that must be investigated. Get this taken care of. Report back. We even want to know when your appointment is scheduled!

just looking over my dad's history, it occurred to me to also advise that each medication she is on be assessed for fatigue potential. My father was getting wrecked by ativan and he was also very sensitive to some of the longer lasting opiates.

The reason B12/folic acid supplements are given when on alimta is that one of alimta's operative effects is to shut down the body's natural production of folic acid/b-12, so the supplements are meant to --- you guessed it, supplement --- the loss of those naturally occurring nutrients. When my poor father was suffering through this, his biggest issue was an absolute debilitating fatigue (he also had had WBR). We tried everything. We put him on a regular dose of the steroid prednisone (that actually worked well for a short while). We also had some ADD type stimulant -- one of the real cutting edge ones, forgot the name --- prescribed. We also had them check for hypothyroidism which can also cause debilitating fatigue. In all honesty, we never found anything that did the trick for my dad, but nothing was lost in tying.

mom called me crying this morning to tell me the bad news. I read his blog every morning, first thing. It was clear that things were coming to a head. He was such a genuine human being. Another good one gone too soon.

echo what Ned said re: chemo: carboplatin and cisplatin are both "paltinum based" chemotherapy. The Europeans favor Cisplatin, Americans, carboplatin. It's thought that cisplatin is slightly more potent (at the margins) but is also a bit more toxic than carboplatin. Doctor is probably favoring cisplatin for your husband because she thinks he is up to it (which I'm sure he is).

couple things I want to say. First, 50% reduction is awesome! and is a great sign as Dr. West has made it quite clear through his posts that "responders respond." That is to say, that people who have good responses to one kind of chemo or "anti-cancer treatment" often have a positive response to other chemo treatments down the line. (The converse is also often true -- non-responders tend never to respond, unfortunately, as was the case with my poor father). 4 to 6 rounds of first line chemo is aboslutley the norm. Dr. West and the other Dr.'s on CancerGrace have discussed this in depth throughout the board. But as Dr. West recently pointed out, there is new compelling research showing that it may be a good idea after 4-6 rounds of one chemo regimen to dive in immediately to "second line" chemo, if the patient is up to it. (The "traditional" approach was after first line chemo completed to wait until there was cancer growth before starting second round treatment) Beginning second round chemo straight away may be an option to discuss with your oncologist.

Exactly Shellit, my dad's "smoker's lung cancer" came over 35 years after he had quit and had been living as healthily as anyone out there.

quite aggravated on a related instance of lung cancer in the media. I'm a golf fanatic and during the US Open there was an event in which three celebrity golfers and one additional decently skilled civillian golferwere selected to play the US Open course to see just how difficult the course would be for an average player. So they guy they chose was this really inspiring guy who has stage 4 lung cancer. Every single time the disease was brought up they said he has "non-smokers" lung cancer. Of course there are many "never smokers" who have lung cancer, but I found it annoying that they kept on referring to it as if that were a clinical category of lung cancer, distinct both treatment wise and morally from the rest of lung cancer sufferers. Like we should feel compassion for this guy but not for the ex smoker and even the current smoker who brought this on themselves . . . I think it would be interesting to gauge people's reactions if they knew that the clinical dividing threshold of being a never-smoker is 100 cigarettes in a lifetime.

Just to throw my lot in here: You have coughed up blood, persistent wheezing/coughing nausea, the antibiotics are not working and you have a significant smoking history. That your doctor is not now pushing for at least an immediate X-ray is borderline malpractice. Bee, you NEED to go to the ER --- perhaps TODAY. Obviously, we don't know if you have LUNG CANCER or not, but all of us agree that the delay here has to come to a stop. This doctor's pushing dates off isn't bad for HER health, and she has pretty much demonstrated that she doesn't care. But this could have HUGE implications for yours, time to take control. You go to the ER and don't leave until you have an X ray or better a CT taken.

yes, I know exactly how you feel. I am sorry for both of us.