Hi
I fixed your top post. :-)
I admire you for taking care of your parents. I was just speaking (at length) with
a lady out here whose mother (age 92) fell and is in nursing home for broken ribs.
While she's healing, the lady's trying to clean up her mother's house. Apparently
nobody's cleaned it for over 20 years !  Then the mother wants to go back home,
yet she's constantly mixing up her medicines and has falls because of taking the
wrong ones twice.
So you've sure got a lot on your hands there, along with working.

I just posted a "call out" to see if anyone will respond to your combo of
medicines.
I searched the archives (and other then some who've not posted in a year or so), I
think Joe was on the combo (but with 5FU) but quit, 'no further growth" in, I
think April. He was under joe-46er and more recently under "46erjoe" asking about
worrisome heart rate when trying to get back into running. And I know that
turtletrot's husband passed away from heart failure. He too was on Avastin (but I
forget the other chemos).
I just went back up the posts and it looks to me that Joe's cancer started
progressing after 4 months. (which seems consistent with what they're saying below
on the Roche page). He also mentioned that camptosar is less troublesome for
neuropathy than the platinum treatments. But if you're resistant, doesn't that
mean you're resistant to camptosar as well?

As far as I know ( and I hope Steph reads my posts because I don't want to repeat
wrong information), Avastin is claimed to prevent tumours from accessing a blood
supply, but doesn't do anything for those that already have an existing blood
supply. But the manufacturer seems to imply that it "chokes off blood supply".
http://www.roche.com/med-cor-2005-04-15
Maybe you could seek clarification from your oncologist ?

Maybe I'm all washed up about this, but if it chokes off blood supply, seems to me
that could account for heart attacks/troubles when taking it?

I tend to "analyze" what is said about treatments. It implies there that colon
cancer pateints gained 2 months, but they don't say what quality of life they had
(after being on first and/or 2nd and/or 3rd etc) line treatments, during those 2
months. And delayed the progression by 4 months. That webpage is dated 15 April
2005

On the other hand, I can't make out if this is Oct 4/2005 or April 10/2005
(100405?)
an update from the FDA
http://www.ons.org/fda/documents/FDA100405.pdf
Changes in the Avastin Package Insert Regarding Lack of Efficacy
in Irinotecan- and Oxaliplatin-Refractory Metastatic Colorectal Cancer

From: Dr. Richard Pazdur Director, Division of Oncology Drug Products Center for
Drug Evaluation and Research, FDA A

vastin (Bevacizumab) was approved in February 2004 to be used in combination with
intravenous 5-fluorouracil-based chemotherapy for the first-line treatment of
patients with metastatic carcinoma of the colon and rectum.

This announcement informs you of the following recent changes made to the Avastin
prescription information: The inclusion of findings from NCI's Treatment Referral
Center (TRC) study of Bevacizumab, infusional 5-fluorouracil, and leucovorin for
the treatment of oxaliplatin- and irinotecan-refractory metastatic colorectal
cancer into the Clinical Studies section of the package insert.

This study, conducted in patients who had progressed following both oxaliplatin-
and irinotecan-containing regimens, showed an absence of activity (as determined
by objective tumor responses) in the third-line treatment of patients metastatic
colorectal cancer.

• The following sentence is added as the final sentence to the first paragraph of
the "Clinical Studies" section of the Avastin label: "The activity of AVASTIN in
patients with refractory metastatic colorectal cancer was evaluated in a third,
open-access trial in combination with intravenous 5-fluorouracil-based
chemotherapy."

• A new subsection is added to the "Clinical Studies" section of the Avastin label
as follows: "AVASTIN in Refractory Metastatic Colorectal Cancer Study 3 was a
multi-center, single arm study that evaluated the activity of AVASTIN in
combination with 5-FU/LV in 339 patients with metastatic colorectal cancer with
disease progression following both irinotecan- and oxaliplatin-containing
chemotherapy regimens. The majority (73%) of patients received concurrent 5FU/LV
according to a bolus regimen.

There was one objective partial response in the first 100 evaluable patients, for
an overall response rate of 1% (95% CI 0-5.5%). The nature and severity of the
adverse events observed in this trial were similar to that seen in the controlled
clinical trials of AVASTIN."

Full prescribing information, including clinical trial information, safety,
dosing, drug-drug interaction, contraindications is available at
www.fda.gov/cder/foi/label/2005/125085s45lbl.pdf.

Healthcare professionals should report all serious adverse events suspected to be
associated with the use of any medicine and device to FDA's MedWatch Reporting
System by phone at 1-800-FDA-1088, by facsimile 1-800-FDA-0178 by mail using the
Form 3500 at http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/index.html [end copied text]

Sorry for the long post. Either way, it's archiving this PDf file, for potential
future reference.

My pont is that you have to know what beenfits and risks you're facing.
I hope you understand. I don't want you winning one war (time to progression), but
losing (risk) or quality of life and time working and spending caring for your
parents ?

So food for thought and/or questions for your oncologist?
Hugs
J