By Larry Puls @larrypulsauthor
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| Choriocarcinoma; Cancer from Pregnancy |
Standing outside the door, I collect my thoughts. Walking into
her hospital room, I see the young lady who is struggling to breathe. Oxygen is flowing to her. At her rate of decline, she will be on the ventilator soon.
And this will not change unless therapy is started quickly. Time becomes a key element. Her breathing is increasingly labored. Her diet is pure oxygen. It is the relative
calm before the storm.
Treatment is defined by the word aggressive. A five-drug regimen going
by the acronym EMACO. Etoposide. Methotrexate. Actinomycin-D. Cytoxan. Oncovin.
Each of those successive letters standing for the listed drugs. But each represents different
side effects. All with the potential to
eradicate those rapidly growing cells--the little parasites taking over her body. And although they will all be administered through an IV, one is also given directly into her spine. A needle into the back. A drug that will bathe the nervous
system with cancer poison. We have to hit the tumor where it lives and breathes--in her brain.
