[rootbear]

My sister (age 67) was diagnosed with exactly this a year ago, except she's stage 4. She's on Alecensa (alectinib) and is doing well, all things considered. Her left lung doesn't work very well, but she's dealing with it. Her cancer isn't localized, so surgery isn't an option. She did have radiation therapy on one tumor.

Alecensa is freaking expensive. Even with Medicare, it's costing her about $10,000 a year in deductibles and copays.

I wish you all the best for your treatments.

[ghjnut]

That's actually better than I heard. Since ALK is more generally rare biomarker (as opposed to EGFR) more of the drugs are still in trial. I asked an oncologist friend about costs and she said $11,000/month.

[rootbear]

The raw cost of Alecensa is around $18,000/month, if I recall correctly. Medicare covers all but $800 of that, once the copays are spent.