August 27, 2024 Cycle 1 Chemo/Immunotherapy Day 1

We arrived at the Medical Center on Monday because Dena had to be there quite early on Tuesday for her first treatment and she had appointments with her oncologist Dr. An as well as lab work to be done before treatment could get started.

She will have to have blood work before treatment can begin on each treatment day, and at the beginning of each cycle she will have to see her oncologist for follow ups.

Currently she is on a trial for immunotherapy along with chemo.  She will have 4 cycles of chemo and immunotherapy and then recover before surgery and then 4 more cycles.  Her cycles are 3 weeks long, week one is immunotherapy and chemo, week two is chemo, and week three is her recovery/rest week.  Then she repeats that 3 more times for a total of 12 weeks.

At the end of her Cycle 2 but within 3 days before her Cycle 3 she will have a CT scan to see how she is handling chemo and how much the tumor has shrunk.  This is our prayer, that the chemo treatment shrinks the tumors so that she can have surgery in January to remove the right lobe of her liver along with the tumor in her bile duct and the tumors on her liver.

Dena has Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma (Bile-Duct cancer, we will go into more detail of this disease over the course of her treatment) that has spread to her liver where there are 3 cancerous lesions on her right lobe as well as the large tumor in her bile duct.

Back to treatment day…we met with her oncologist and prepared her for how things would go once in the ATC (Ambulatory Treatment Center).  Her lab work from earlier in the morning came back as we expected with higher than previous CA 19-9 tumor marker.  Her other blood levels were where we expected.  Onto the ATC we went for her 6 hour treatment.  Kayden was with us this first one because she also has her appointments at Texas Children’s this week.  Ciara one of our middle children lives about 30 min from her so she came to spend time with her Mom.

Treatment went smooth and no issues, we just hung out in the room with her and she was finished about 8:00 that evening.  We packed up and made our way back to our hotel to rest up and prepare for Kayden’s appointment in 2 days.