MEDICAL UPDATE

Updated: Jun 21, 2023

It's been a whirl wind for past couple of weeks with ER visits, treatments and tests. The pleurodesis surgery to control pleural effusion (fluid near the lungs) was successful based on the CT scan but unfortunately there has been progression in cancer. I met with my oncologist and she gave me a few options for standard chemos and an option of enrolling in a clinical trial. Clinical trial is also a chemotherapy but it's just that it's is not FDA( US Food and Drug Administration) approved and the drugs are still in a study phase where it's been tested on participants.

CLINICAL TRIAL

Out of all the options, clinical trial sounded like a good option to us since we get to try the latest technology since the statistical numbers of drug working for all options were all the same around 30-50%. We enrolled for the clinical trial called REGN4018 in combination with REGN5668 that I seemed to be a good fit for. REGN5668 and REGN4018 are both drugs called “bispecific antibodies” developed by a company called Regeneron. A bispecific antibody is made to attach to two specific proteins involved in the growth and survival of cancer cells. REGN5668 and REGN4018 may help activate T cells, which are immune cells that help the body fight infections and may also kill cancer cells.

On this trial, I would have had long infusions and stay in the hospital for 2-3 days every week for 8 weeks. To be eligible for this study, I had to do lot of bloodwork, EKG, ECHO, brain MRI, an eye exam and have pleural effusion controlled.

After doing all the tests, I didn't qualify for the clinical trial! Everything else was good except the pleural effusion. Even after doing the pleurodesis surgery, I have been having severe pain in the right lung area, which kept increasing day by day. The CT scans showed an increase in pleural effusion. The clinical trial requires the pleural effusion to be controlled or something called PleurX catheter to be installed.

I was relieved that I didn't have to go through the intensive chemo schedule and hospital stays. It would have been really crazy!! Also, I wasn't sure if I took the right decision to go with clinical trial and I was praying and telling God that if it isn't his will, to show a way out. So I was actually happy that I didn't qualify for the clinical trial.

ELAHERE CHEMOTHERAPY

Since cancer was progressing quickly, my oncologist said that we need to start a chemo quickly, so we opted for chemotherapy with a newly FDA approved drug called Elahere.

ELAHERE is a new FDA approved drug to treat adults with folate receptor⁠–⁠alpha(FRα) positive ovarian cancer who have not responded to or are no longer responding to treatment with platinum-based chemotherapy(this is the standard ovarian cancer treatment) and have received 1 to 3 prior types of chemotherapy. My tumor tissue sample stored from the cancer surgery surgery was tested and my cancer is positive for FRα so I was eligible for this drug.

Here is an image from Elahere brochure that shows how the drug works.

It looks really promising but I really don't trust any chemotherapy anymore!! It may or may not work :( I am totally depended on God to heal me at this point because Proverbs 21:31 "The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but victory rests with the LORD".

The side effects of this chemo are almost same as the other chemos - nausea, low blood levels, neuropathy, abdomen pain, constipation and eye issues. Eye issues is something they are really focused on. They said some people may develop eye problems during treatment like blurred vision, dry eyes, sensitivity to light, eye pain etc. I have to use steroid eye drops and lubricating eye drops to prevent this. Keeping fingers crossed!! I cannot use contact lens at all during the course of this treatment so can only wear glasses :( I hate wearing glasses!! I have been using contact lens for the past 25yrs. I remove my contacts and wear glasses only right before I go to sleep. Now I have to wear glasses all the time. It's so irritating and half the time I keep it somewhere and I'm blind and searching for it....!!

I have to do 8 cycles of Elahere chemotherapy, once every 3 weeks. Started my first cycle on June 8th. It went well without any issues, took about 3 hours for the infusion.

From the day after my infusion I started getting severe pain near the right lungs area in the front and back. Had this pain even before the infusion. It was so severe that even narcotics couldn't control the pain. Ended up in ER. I had to stay over in the hospital for pain management. They did all tests and a CT scan and said that there are cancerous nodules in the chest wall that could be causing the pain and the treatment for that is IR ablation procedure.

I underwent the IR Cyroablation procedure on June 13th. They used 4 ice probes under CT guidance to freeze the nodules so that the cancer cells are killed and the nodules fall off. Soon after the procedure I started feeling better with the pain where the nodules was but still have a lot of pain from the surgery itself.

This is my 8th surgery/procedure under anesthesia.....how cool is that!! I don't know anyone in my family or friends circle who underwent 8 surgeries.

I'm still recovering from this surgery and chemo. The pain is definitely better but still have a lot of pain for which I take pain medicines every 4 hours.

Today was one of the better days so here I'm writing....

Please continue to pray for a miracle!!