posting about Tarceva again - more specific questions

[gail p-m]

My father, age 81, has had adeonocarcinoma with BAC features for almost 5 years now - stage 3b. Recently he experienced his 3rd recurrance in his lung and the oncologist is probably going to put him on Tarceva. My questions:

1. Has it worked for you and if so, for how long?

2. Did you get the rash and if so, how did you treat it?

3. Did you get the "runs" with it?

4. Are you aware of any research that says it usually seems to work better if you get the rash?

5. Is there anything else that I should know about Tarceva?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Gail

[Ry]

You can see from my profile how long Tarceva has worked for John. The "rash" varies for everyone from severe acne looking stuff, to dry skin, to small bumps. He uses a good moisture lotion and it helps. We've used several, right now he's using one made by Curel. He gets the diarhea off and on, not constant and Imodium helps. About the rash/working information...who knows? Good luck with it.

[Justakid]

I don't know that the tarceva ever worked, I took it for 3mths.

My rash was horrible and I was treated with antibiotics and I tried every cream on the market!

No runs.

I thought that the worse the rash was it made sense it was working, but not for me!

Good luck!

[curriea]

Hi!

If you do a google search on Tarceva, you'll find some really interesting articles about it. When it was combined with Avastin in a clinical trial most of the participants had good results -- like more than half had a positive response!

Craig's oncologist told us that there appeared to a direct correlation with the severity of the rash and Tarceva's effectivness. He didn't say where he heard that, but I could ask.

Craig's rash was horrid at first but seems to have tapered off for the time being. Now that I have read some of the posting on LCSC, I know that we can expect it to recur.

Good luck with Tarceva!