Trip To Indy on 08/05/2009

We went to University of Indiana today and spoke to fabulous doctor Kathleen Miller

• Gina unfortunately does not qualify for the new Herceptin Clinical Trial because she is still on Decadron (steroid that helps with brain swelling from radiation and tumors in brain)
• It was disappointing for us both but Dr Miller explained the clinical trial is very specific in who qualifies for it
• One criteria is no chemo for 20 days and another was no radiation or brain issues (steroids or changes to brain tumors) within last 60 days
• Dr Miller and her staff were AWESOME - bedside manner, personality and obviously very knowledgeable in Oncology (kinda reminded us of Dr Kelly Nicholas in Chicago)
• Dr Miller agreed with keeping Gina on new chemotherapy (Ixempra) for another cycle and then do scans to see if it is working (next Thursday is cycle #2)
  
• A suggestion was to try new chemotherapy called Doxil which is basically a form of chemotherapy that actually is one of the few that attacks cancer all over the body INCLUDING breaking the blood-brain barrier and getting into the brain to treat those tumors. It sounded very promising as it is structured in a way that it the coating allows DOXIL to evade detection and destruction by the immune system, which increases the time the drug is in the body. The majority of the drug stays inside the liposome while in the blood (at least 90%). Therefore, DOXIL has more time to reach the tumor tissue, where the medication slowly leaks out.
  
• Keeping our fingers crossed that the brain is getting better and we may be able to start the clinical trial at a later date (or that the new chemo now, Ixemra, does it's job and kills those cancer cells!
• University of Indiana was a very impressive facility from the staff working inside, to the building itself (calming, structured and efficient)

More later on where we are at after consulting Dr. Sipahi, Dr. Olopade, and Dr. Nicholas.