How long should I wait before moving onto the next treatment?
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How long should I wait before moving onto the next treatment?

› Forums › General Melanoma Community › How long should I wait before moving onto the next treatment?

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    • February 25, 2018 at 6:12 am
    warreri
    Participant

      The tumors in my leg only seem to be branching off instead of shrinking. I started Yervoy in August and then when my tumors grew they decided to put me on Opdivo as well. Given all that, the pet scan from a few weeks ago shows that all my tumors just grew with more spots since my pet scan in December. I'm just wanting to know the point in immunotherapy treatment where we should be calling it quits because while my dr does think it might be slowing the grow down I seriously doubt it's going to cure me at this rate. So there is is about seven months since my first yervoy injection (obviously I ended that because they don't keep you on it for that long) and six months since my first opdivo infusion (still ongoing) and nothing but tumor growth. 

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        • February 25, 2018 at 11:42 pm
        Bubbles
        Participant

          I am sorry that you are going through all this.  However, if you have only the local (despite diffuse) lesions in your leg…you are the perfect candidate for intralesional, radiation, and/or limb perfusion treatment!!!

          We KNOW that radiation plus immunotherapy works better than either treatment alone.  Here are a zillion reports: http://chaoticallypreciselifeloveandmelanoma.blogspot.com/search?q=immunotherapy+and+radiation

          Some of these reports are specific to brain mets…but not all of them…and the principle is the same no matter what part of the body we are talking about.

          Intralesional therapy covers many different drugs that are injected directly into superficial and sub q lesions.  The results can be pretty phenomenal killing off injected tumors as well as "by stander" lesions:  http://chaoticallypreciselifeloveandmelanoma.blogspot.com/search?q=intralesional&max-results=20&by-date=true  

          Intralesional drugs include (but are not limited to):

          CAVATAK – derived from the Coxsackievirus
          T-VEC – also called OncoVEX, Imlygic,  or Talimogene Laherparepvec – uses the herpes virus with GM-CSF
          PV-10 – derived from Rose Bengal
          HF10 – also derived from HSV
          SD101 – a TLR9 agonist
          IL-2 – see note above, is also being used
           

          And finally…see below (Yes, "pass ports" are sold on this site quite easily…but if I put more than 3 links up…I trigger the spam blocker!)….

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