Really Resting, Finally

I finally got to spring Trent from the hospital today.  Somehow that made everything a whole lot better!  He is resting comfortably, mostly, and loving the peace and quiet. 

Last night I slept like a rock!  It was heavenly!  I woke up feeling so much better.  When I got to the hospital Trent was already getting antsy to get outta there!  We were paid a visit by none other than Dr. D'aDamo, the not-so-impressive doctor from the first visit.  To his credit, he made a much more favorable impression on me this time.  He does know his stuff, he just didn't have experience with interoperative chemo which is what we needed from him before.  Now that the plan has changed my expectations have also.  We discussed three or four different treatment options and he explained the risks and benefits of each.  No one really knows what will work for Trent.  His cancer is way too rare.  To put it in perspective, sarcomas are only 1% of all cancer diagnoses each year.  Of that 1%, extraskeletal osteosarcomas, which is what Trent's cancer has now been classified as, only make up 1-4% of diagnoses.  So his unique circumstance does not come up too often, to say the least. 

Dr. D'aDamo confirmed what the radiation oncologists had said.  Radiation is not going to benefit Trent right now, possibly never.  Sarcomas do not really respond to radiation very well, so at this point radiation would probably just irritate the lungs and heart and not provide any benefit.  Dr. D'aDamo is in favor of taking two of the chemotherapies that were successful for Trent before, Gemcitabine and Dacarbazine, and putting them together in a little different way.   Dacarbazine is the liquid form of Temodar which is a drug that was part of the "triplet" we used last.  It would be a 28 day cycle instead of 21, and Trent would only receive two infusions, two weeks apart.  After two rounds, we scan.  He said that they are getting very good response using these drugs in Europe.  We would know pretty quickly whether or not these drugs were working.  A lot of it would be based on how Trent feels and then we would have regular chest x-rays.  X-rays are obviously not as good as CT scans but they would be able to give us a good enough picture of what is going on without exposing Trent to as much radiation.  Dr. D'aDamo is also hoping to be able to get one dose in before Christmas.  He is a little leery of waiting two weeks because of how aggressive the tumor is right now.  The last two weeks it wreaked havoc on Trent's innards.  We would like to avoid that if we could. 

Right now Trent is a little sore in his chest where they removed the tubes, but mostly he is struggling with a yeast rash.  Because of all the antibiotics that he was on pre-operatively, his natural body bacteria is all out of whack and he has a wicked rash now because of it.  We are going to fill him up with yogurt and Fluconazole.  Hopefully that will do the trick in short order.  Trent will be a much happier guy once that is taken care of.  He is able to get up and around okay now and is talking in full sentences that make sense most of the time.  That is a huge relief!  It has been almost a whole week since he was himself!  Having him "back" makes the whole ordeal easier to handle.  We are both looking forward to a little R and R and are going to do everything we can to keep him from experiencing any unplanned trips to the hospital!