My Mom went in earlier in the week for her CT scans and the tumors are continuing to shrink or have completely disappeared. When all of this started she had tumors in her: lungs, kidneys, liver, adrenal gland and 18 or so tumors on her scalp and one tumor the the size of a birds egg on the back of her neck. In addition she had 25 brain mets treated spanning two separate occasions (12/9/13 8 treated, 4/15/13 17 treated).
Her doctors and we are thrilled and its been less that 1 year since her diagnosis and the start of treatment (12/9/13). She's done fantastic with Gamma Knife followed up with starting Yervoy within the week.
During this week's visit her doctor gave us some numbers to go along with what he believe's is her outlook is. Here it is:
Based on how she has responded to Yervoy (very quickly & all tumors) he believes that she is firmly in the group of people who, at 5 years, had needed no other treatment. – 92% after 5+ years of tracking have had no other treatments and the 8% who needed additional treatment seem to respond to Keytruda ,as well as or better than, they did to Yervoy. So, we know the next step if one is needed.
Considering where we were last year and the fact that her brain mets were completely missed by the original radiologist she is one very lucky woman.
I hope one day everyone has these results. Medicine/Science has come along way and the treatments can only get better from here.
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