Good news: The "suspcious spot" found in the femur by the PET scan was shown in the MRI to be only about 1/4 inch in size, and not obvious as a tumor, so it is being considered as "probably not cancer" for now, and Lisa is still treated as being in Stage 3.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) Lisa will have the "port" put in as planned. Two days later she starts chemotherapy. She'll have it every Thursday for 3 weeks, have a one week break, and then start another 3-week series identical to the first series. The first week in each series is a larger dose with two medications, Carboplatin and Taxotere, taking about three hours to administer. The following two weeks have only Taxotere. We're told that they'll administer anti-nausea meds before the chemo, and adjust as needed along the way for other possible side effects while she's hooked up to the IV. We're also told that except for ongoing fatigue, Lisa probably won't have any side effects to deal with between treatments once she is "unplugged" and heads for home. Well, except that she will probably lose her hair four or five weeks into it like most people on chemo do.
At the end of the seven weeks of chemotherapy, Lisa will have new scans done to determine the effect on her cancer. If it looks like there has been no spread and the primary tumor has shrunk in size, what would probably happen is to have biopsies done in the lymph areas behind the sternum (outside the lung) and see if the cancer is no longer there. If it is completely gone from that area, they would remove at least the upper lobe of the right lung where it all started, as a preventive that has been found to improve long-term chances against reccurance.
The Oncologist said that there is certainly a percentage of people with her type and stage of lung cancer who overcome it and are long-term survivors. There's no way to predict who will fall into that group, but the doctor looked right at Lisa, and said, "You might as well be one of them!" This fast-track and aggressive therapy protocol is designed to do just that. There is data on the use of this chemo combination in advanced stage NSCLC cases going back well over a decade, showing it as one of the more effective treatments.
Michael