Monthly Archives: May 2010

Where to start?  It’s been a busy week.  On Thursday I went to Boston for allergy testing. I sleep on a natural latex mattress and had been using a pillow out of the same material. Several mornings in a row I awakened with a lot of swelling around my eyes and cheeks. After spending the night at a friend’s home and waking up minus the swelling, I returned to my own bed only to have it happen again. I replaced the pillow with one that wasn’t latex and  voila, no more swelling. Because I am in and out of a hospital so much, there was a chance that I had developed an allergy to latex. A prick test (yes, that’s what they call it) came back negative and I am awaiting a blood test, but it seems unlikely that my facial edema was related to latex. A minor medical mystery.

On Saturday, we had a belated birthday party for Peter, who turned thirteen in April. Seven of his buddies spent twenty four hours at our house. The air was thick with adolescent testosterone. When they weren’t eating they were out in the woods using each other as target practice with a battery of air soft guns. They all had on protective gear and were instructed to not shoot each other in the face and/or point blank, and, for the most part, they complied.

The entire air soft concept took me awhile to warm to. Despite my own access to not only cap guns (remember the smell of a freshly detonated cap?) but twenty two rifles as a child, as an adult and a pacifist, I have a general policy against weapons of any sort. Not easily thwarted,  a then-three-year-old August would chew his toast into the shape of a gun. Gradually I acknowledged that an attraction to things that shoot was somewhat intrinsic, and rather than banning firearms, I did my best to stress respect for life while allowing for fantasy play. These new guns do take it to another level. However, the boys had a great time and we all survived.

Sunday afternoon we partook of a more gentile activity, as Peter had a music recital. It was lovely to listen to a wide range of ages and abilities on a variety of instruments, including Peter Duff on guitar.

I turned in early that night, exhausted from the boy party, a big boy party (remember Go Dog Go and “a dog party, a big dog party”; I cut my reading teeth on that book). Yesterday morning I left the house at six a.m. to follow that familiar path down the highway to Boston. All the trees are almost completely leafed out now, and everything is so green. There was also a lot of roadkill. I saw opossum, fisher cat, coyote, deer, as well as some mangled black fur of unknown origin. It is a sad rite of spring;  young animals unaware of the great danger that crossing a highway poses.

At my  appointment, Alice (Dr. Shaw) laid out my treatment options in more detail. My next scan is in three weeks, and will help us to assess how quickly the cancer is developing. At some point I will need to undergo another biopsy, in order to learn more about why I have become resistant to the 1066 as well as to determine what the most appropriate therapy might be. If the pleural effusion has gained in volume, some of the fluid could be removed and analyzed. The presence of the fluid makes it viable to remove ‘live’ cancerous cells that could then be cultured.  Clinically that would be a real advantage, but from a therapeutic perspective a pleural effusion can be difficult to manage, so I am hopeful that such a scenario is not an option.  In lieu of that, I would likely have a wedge resection via VATS, as a punch biopsy would not procure enough material.

As I mentioned before, a HSP-90 inhibitor might be the next logical step.  HSP-90 is an acronym for Heat Shock Protein 90.  In healthy cells, HSP-90 acts in part as a chaperone that shields proteins from destruction. In cancerous cells, a number of proteins can be over expressed and inhibition of HSP-90 may induce apoptosis (cell death) through inhibition of growth signaling pathways. A phase II trial for HSP-90 is now enrolling patients with ALK mutations at MGH.

Alimta remains a fallback possibility and we will be keeping our eyes on a couple of ALK inhibitors in the pipeline (in addition to Ariad, Novartis has one in development).  My fingers are crossed.

In a couple of weeks, ASCO will have it’s annual meeting and this year the PF-02341066 trial results will be presented in a plenary session.  I am interested in seeing the newly published data, including the actual number of participants who, like myself, have relapsed.  I am also happy that the resulting exposure and publicity will make so many more oncologists and patients aware that people with NSCLC should be tested for mutations. It really is the dawning of a new era in cancer treatment.