So it’s time for me to go on another Doctor Quest. That is, a quest for doctors, not a father of an intrepid young explorer, his Indian friend and small dog. I’m getting ready to begin my quest for both a primary care doc (haven’t had one really since my cancer diagnosis) and a shrink. The ADD’s been getting pretty bad as of late, and I need someone who can tell me whether it’s that acting up or chemo brain. Or both. The fun never stops.
Since the shrink may very well prescribe meds for me, I gave my favorite Kathryn a call to see if she could make a list of all the different chemo regimens I’ve had. She was able to, and holy moly. Turns out, I’ve had sixteen unique chemo drugs in the past year. Even wound up having a few of them twice. How’s this for a list of ingredients:
- ABVD: doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, dacarbazine
- ICE: Ifosfamide, carboplatin, etoposide
- No-name #1: Cisplatin, gemcitabine
- No-name #2: Ifosfamide, gemcitabine, navelbine
- British MOPP: Chlorambucil, vinblastine, Procarbazine, prednisone
- BEAM: BCNU, etoposide, cytarabine, melphalan
Wow. That’s one thing about SuperCoop – he’s thorough. I was doing a bit of research on some of these and whenever there’s a family of chemo drugs with subsets, I’ve pretty much had one from each of the subsets. It’s all quite impressive when you lay it out on a big piece of paper. I would hate to be the doctor figuring out my drug interactions for the next couple of years.