increased blood flow to tumor site?

[Remembering Dave]

Dave's met is to his right frontal sinus cavity and surrounding bone (basically skull). lungs are still clear, no sign of the cancer returning anywhere, else including his brain, he had a brain MRI last week and all it showed, apparently, was that the tumor is shrinking but the swelling is increasing, and the onc. told dave at chemo yesterday that was probably because of increased blood flow to the tumor site. what does that mean? is that good? if I were there I'd be asking him, but I guess he just stepped back into the chemo room to speak to dave briefly.

thanks, guys,

Karen

[kimblanchard]

When you say swelling, do you mean swelling in the adjacent brain or in the sinus itself? Cancers do recruit their own blood supply and these blood vessels are abnormal and quite leaky. Swelling can occur for some time following radiation as well due to the radiation injury to the tissues. I wouldn't say that swelling is necessarily a good or bad sign, just something that needs to be watched.

[Remembering Dave]

I got the impression that he meant in the sinus area itself, not the brain. in fact, the bump looks a little bigger to me. not big, but you can see a slight rise in the forehead. at first it was huge, than after several rounds of chemo and all the radiation, it went away, now it is slightly raised again. so I think he meant in the sinus area itself.

maybe it's the abnormal tumor blood vessels still lurking around.

I think you sorta answered my question even if you don't realize it.

thanks, Joe.

Karen

[Remembering Dave]

Dr. Joe,

I decided to do what I should have done yesterday. I left a message for "our" oncologist to call me. he did, within the hour. he said in his opinion the bonkitis (sinus met) tumor is gone, and said the swelling is probably not so much from the increased blood to the area but probably fluid which has built up as a reaction to the radiation. he said there is somthing pushing a little into the brain but it might be fluid. Dave's getting an MRI to his orbit to get a closer look at everything and he also asked me to set up an appt. with the radiation oncologist to take a look at the fluid issue.

whew.

I posted something about all of this under Good News as well.

[Remembering Dave]

Update: we saw the radiation oncologist this morning. He said that a little bit of the radiation targeted at the bonkitis tumor in the right frontal sinus cavity hit the brain just behind it, most likely, and because that part of the brain had already received radiation via PCI, it has swelled up - the swelling Dave has is actually the brain itself - and the fluid around it is backing into that sinus cavity, causing pressure, pushing out making the bump.

He wanted to put Dave on decadron for the inflammation, but Dave has been on decadron before and reacted about as horribly to it as a person can react. Totally psycho. So we said NO MORE DECADRON unless it is life or death, and the doc grinned and said he remembered that, so we will just let the fluid dissipate on its own. Which he said would only be a couple of months. Heck, the decadron treatment would probably be an entire month in itself. Not worth.

But the good news is that both he and the oncologist think the bonkitis tumor is GONE, so knowing what is going on with Dave is much easier to deal with now.

thanks for your ear, Dr. Joe.

Karen

[kimblanchard]

Decadron is pretty nasty stuff for some people, we had a patient who got absolutely psychotic on it and had to admit her for psychiatric care until the effects went away. Glad you are getting good reports!