January8, 2013

The results of Kerry's most recent scan were that there is a tumor in his liver that is growing at a rather rapid rate.  He started having some discomfort 2 days before the scan so was not surprised by the results.  The good news is that there are no tumors anywhere else. At this point there seem to be 3 potential courses of action:

• Yervoy -- a drug which can be effective in putting melanoma tumors at bay.  It doesn't work in all patients, but is the only FDA approved treatment there is that he hasn't tried to treat his stage of disease.
• A drug trial with an MEK protein inhibitor.  The OHSU doctor gave an explanation heavily laden with biochemistry terms that I never studied in college -- so I really don't understand its mechanism of operation.   It is a phase 2 trial that has been effective with patients with the NRAS melanoma mutation that he has.  The side effects vary, but do not appear to be deadly or irreversible. As with Yervoy, it doesn't work for everyone and we wouldn't know until it is tried if it would work for Kerry.  Also because it is a trial, the long term effectiveness or side effects are not know.
• Since the tumor is only in one lobe of his liver, some consideration is being given to removing that lobe.  Apparently the liver regenerates quite quickly.  A group of doctors (called the tumor board) meet tomorrow to discuss whether this is a viable option. Two of the doctors Kerry talked to yesterday seemed to think that this might be his best option.

Making decisions like this are very difficult.  Please send us your good thoughts.