Herceptin II

Have not written for some time which suppose to be a really good sign as I am really busy between work, walking and social events...

Need to give an update about Herceptin as all my worries and concerned have been for nothing. As I mentioned before I had a MUGA scan done in February that showed that my heart muscle was weaking and the heart injection had gone from 66% to 56% so I had a risk of having to stop Herceptin. The thought of not finishing my full 12 months protocol of Herceptin got me really nervous and allowed my mind to go wild on what will happen if I had to stop.

Last week I went to do a new MUGA scan, my doctor prescribe this time Valium to have my heart at the more relaxing state. I hate to take pills and specially the ones that make you drowsy so I did not take it at home but took the pills with me to the Hospital. I had a different technician from the one that is normally there on my previous tests, and I mentioned about the Valium and he told me: "I do not think you need it but it is up to you". They first drawn your blood, then they mix it with the radioactive dye or whatever it is and half an hour later they inject it back and they lay you down in the scan. When he started the process, I started my thousand questions that I normally do when I am nervous......and after the question number 20 he said: " I think you should take that Valium!". At the end I took half of it as I was too scared to take the full pill and make a fool of myself falling complete sleep at the scan table!, I kept imaging myself not being able to wake up and they would had to leave me there until the effect of the pill will finish. When I took it, he did not allowed me to go back to the waiting room, I had to stay there with him in case I had a reaction from it.....So I spent 30 min with him while he danced for me, he sang who knows what and told me everything about his life, bless him!!, have to say he was quite entertaining. After that time the scan started and by them Valium was doing something as I was really relaxed!, the scan is in three series, two of 5 min and one of 10 min and during that time you have to hear your heart monitor doing the "beep, beep...." which is really annoying.

The scan was Tuesday and Dr Chen does not work on Wednesday so I had to wait until Thursday morning for her to call me with the results. She did call me early in the morning and my result was 70%!!!. I had a feeling that my scan was going to improved but I did not expect the 70%, she did not say much apart from great and very impressive results and lets talk more about it on Monday.

So I had my Herceptin treatment yesterday and talk to her about the scan, she says that sometimes the dye they use might not do the work and the reading is incorrect so she is going to disregard the Feb scan. She can explain why I am higher than Nov one: I am doing much more sports than last year, but she can not explain any magical recovery in 6 weeks of my heart from Feb to March scan. So my question to her was: "how can I trust this scan going forward?", she says she does trust it when it is high, when it is low we look at it more closely (do more scans) to see if it is correct.

Yesterday I had a full check up, my blood results are great and even if I am still doing Herceptin every three weeks, she does not want to see me until July!!!, I am kind of going to miss her that I have been seen her almost every 2 or 3 weeks for the past 9 months!.

I am starting to believe that the big changes that I am doing in my life are starting to pay off, eating healthier, doing more sports and in general enjoying my life is making a big impact on me and the results around me are speaking by itself. I think I have said it before but it is ironic that I am probably now the healthiest that I have ever been.