~Cancer~

[Douger]

A buddy of mine just died from lung cancer. 12 years ago they gave him a few months to live.
The local medicine man kept him alive for all of those years.He drank different teas all day long and spent considerable time in thermal pools. The diet, of course, was basically macrobiotic in nature.
No autopsy but the medicine man said he "saw" the cancer had moved to his brain.
He wasn't on O2 and hadn't lost very much weight or strength. He simple didn't wake up one morning.

Cool guy. Moved to the jungle with a hotdog-sausage cart and newborn triplets.Almost no money. In a few years he had built a kickass house, gift shop/real estate office, full tilt restaurant and a bed and breakfast.
He had moved from Austria to the empire. After 3 years he'd seen enough and escaped to reality.

I have another friend that's on her way out too. No doctors and thinks the medicine man is bullshit.
OH well. She didn't get to 300 lbs by being open to new ideas !

 

[MaggieMae]

Yep. Mega bucks from the drug companies, doctors, etc.

Which is why all the spending on my Cancer care if I were to get it has already been done.... I've got the gun and the bullet. It's actually put aside specially for that potential occassion (cancer or a number of other things).

There are less obvious ways to end your life, especially if you have an insurance policy that will deny death benefits due to suicide.

 

[MaggieMae]

Yep. Mega bucks from the drug companies, doctors, etc.

Which is why all the spending on my Cancer care if I were to get it has already been done.... I've got the gun and the bullet. It's actually put aside specially for that potential occassion (cancer or a number of other things).

Yep, because it's obvious, we aren't ever going to find a cure or be treated correctly waiting on the doctors~

I had a friend who, like so many others, was sicker with the chemo treatment than from the cancer. She opted to take an early retirement and take a trip around the world to spots she had always hoped to visit, knowing she would die sooner rather than later, but at least enjoy those final days.

I specifically state in my Advanced Directive that I'm to receive no chemotherapy, ever, even if I'm in a state where someone else is making decisions for me. Just pull the plug if I'm ever that sick. I've had a great life, with few regrets.

 

[uscitizen]

Yep. Mega bucks from the drug companies, doctors, etc.

Which is why all the spending on my Cancer care if I were to get it has already been done.... I've got the gun and the bullet. It's actually put aside specially for that potential occassion (cancer or a number of other things).

There are less obvious ways to end your life, especially if you have an insurance policy that will deny death benefits due to suicide.

Quite right and hard on family and friends having your brians splattered all over the place.
An "accidental" overdose will work fine for me and spare those who oppose suicide some anguish.

 

[Dabs]

Yep. Mega bucks from the drug companies, doctors, etc.

Which is why all the spending on my Cancer care if I were to get it has already been done.... I've got the gun and the bullet. It's actually put aside specially for that potential occassion (cancer or a number of other things).

There are less obvious ways to end your life, especially if you have an insurance policy that will deny death benefits due to suicide.

Yes there are some that will not uphold their policy pay-off if the death is a suicide.
Which is why you have to do some searching as far as your life insurance...I'm not saying people want to commit suicide, I just mean, read all the fine print.
My life insurance stated that they would not pay off on a suicide death within the first 2 years after I took out the policy.
Not a problem anymore, I have had mine for well over 10 year now.

 

[Anachronism]

Quite right and hard on family and friends having your brians splattered all over the place. An "accidental" overdose will work fine for me and spare those who oppose suicide some anguish.

I suspect that by the time this is likely to be an issue, there really won't be many people around to care. Assuming it occurs after my mother passes away, the only real close family I have would be my two brothers, their wives and my nephews & niece. I can count the number of close friends who would really care about my death on both hands and have fingers left over. There's really nobody for me to leave anything to; not that I really have much to leave in the first place.

 

[bill5]

Cancer is a fungus.

?? Hardly.

I lost both my parents to cancer too. My mother at 58 from bone cancer; my father at 72 from lung cancer (although he hadn't smoked for 24 years). Everyone loathes cancer, but when are we going to also start loathing the fact that there are many proven cures that can't get off the ground because a "cure" isn't profitable?

I'm very sorry for your losses; I have lost people close to me to cancer as well. But is it not a fact that there are "many proven cures" - in fact there are exceedingly few, if any. There are however many snake oil salesmen and assorted quacks who claim to have one so they can make a buck off of people desperate to believe in one. IMO they rank among the lowest slime on the face of the earth.

I'm sorry for all of your losses and those dealing with this!

 

[MaggieMae]

Which is why all the spending on my Cancer care if I were to get it has already been done.... I've got the gun and the bullet. It's actually put aside specially for that potential occassion (cancer or a number of other things).

Yep, because it's obvious, we aren't ever going to find a cure or be treated correctly waiting on the doctors~

I had a friend who, like so many others, was sicker with the chemo treatment than from the cancer. She opted to take an early retirement and take a trip around the world to spots she had always hoped to visit, knowing she would die sooner rather than later, but at least enjoy those final days.

I specifically state in my Advanced Directive that I'm to receive no chemotherapy, ever, even if I'm in a state where someone else is making decisions for me. Just pull the plug if I'm ever that sick. I've had a great life, with few regrets.

I was surprised to see this thread pop back up in my User CP today, but less surprised that I said that (above). That's been my conviction for many, many years.

HOWEVER, not long after this thread began, I started noticing a swelling in my neck accompanied by thick, stringy saliva. So I went to my GP, who sent me to an ENT who performed a biopsy. Yup, non-Hodgkins lymphoma currently staging in the neck nodes which I've been having 5-day/week radiation plus 1 day per week infusion of Erbitux (Cetuximab), which is not a chemical (chemo) but rather a monoclonal antibody originally derived from mice but now derived from human antibody cells. It inhibits the growth receptors of cells which have divided into sarcoma (cancer) cells. I've had absolutely none of the usual side effects which often result from chemical infusions (chemotherapy) and which also kills the body's heathy cells (thus the sickness from it).

Aside from taking a whole lot of time away from my normal activities for daily treatments which will last through September, establishing entirely new eating habits, and daily regimens with Rx and OTC schedules, I look at this new invasion of my lifestyle as just temporary and I'm determined to get through it. If not, if it spreads and I find I will be more sick eventually from treatment than the actual disease, at that point, my Advanced Directive will rule, and that is just to assure some quality of life and with minimum pain.

It's been amazing to see how fast my attitude changed, once I realized that treating cancer even 20 years ago is far, far advanced today. Cancer specialists are also much more aware that they need to treat the emotional side effects and can no longer just shuttle patients through test after test and with a pat on the head just instruct them to do as they say. My oncology team constantly assures me that I AM THE BOSS. I am the patient, and if something isn't "working" for me, then it's up to THEM to design therapy around my body blueprint and my comfort zone, not just what's convenient or favored by them in general.

After the weekly treatments, I have a consultation with my primary oncologist and we go over the results, and at that time I'm able to present my list of questions (and suggestions!) which we also review. I think I've become either one of his best patients or one of his worst patients!!

So far, it's an incredible journey, and sure to be the longest chapter in that book I keep gathering notes along the way to write some day. Stay tuned! I've been thinking about how I would let my friends on USMB know what's been going on with me, or whether I should bother at all, since I don't personally know any of you but many have become anonymous confidants and friends, although many of us also greatly disagree on political matters. I think eventually we all come to realize how insignificant those differences truly are, frankly.
So I'm glad to have found the opening to do that. I had totally forgotten this thread existed.

Maggie

PS: I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm way past that process (Oh God, why me??!! ) You can drive yourself to suicide trying to figure out the answer to that!

 

[MaggieMae]

One more note, a bit of trivia:

Erbitux is the drug that Martha Stewart landed in jail over on inside trader charges. Back then, it was considered the new non-chemo wonder drug that had incredible proven results for treating Stage IV (yes!) colon cancer. In the meantime, while all this Wall Street bullshit was going on, the FDA wouldn't approve its use, so the scientists began seeing if the drug would also be effective in treatmet of other types of cancers, and voila! They discovered that it is an excellent substitute for chemotherapy/radiation by combining the radiation regimen with a weekly dose of the antibody and eliminating chemotherapy from the treatment process. The only known common side effect is a rash in the area being treated, which can appear as acne but it isn't and goes away once treatment is finished. But there are also suggestions on how to avoid that too, and so far, I've had no rash (or acne!). (Although I do look like I did 20-30 years ago when I spent every waking hour in the hot LA sun, which is from the radiation, not the drug.)

 

[Dabs]

My Mother told me the radiation treatments were the worst thing ever!
The chemo, she said, was easier than the radiation.
My Mother had 6 weeks of chemotherapy and she had 36 radiation treatments....36!!!!!!!!!!
They literally burnt her up inside. For when it came time several months later, after we were told she was in remission, and the cancer was back- radiation was no longer an option, they said to put her on the table and try radiation one more time, would kill her right then.
And surgery was never an option for my Mother. She had a hilar mass....and for anyone that doesn't know...that's a cancer mass right next to the heart and all the other major arteries.
She had a mass that was 2.7 x 2.9 cm.
I would get so ******* pissed.....cursing at anything I could. They could send a man to the moon, invented all this technology with cell phones and iPods and all the time, it's something new or another......but nobody could find a way to save my Mother, to remove a small mass off her lung.
I have to hush now, I still get emotional when I think about it all :-(

 

[wirebender]

I was having blood work done for some minor surgury 12 years ago. My doc called and told me that there was some unspecified problem with the test. I thought that maybe they had lost it and needed more. (a real pain in the arm since it takes an average of 3 sticks to actually get into one of my veins). When I got to the office, they ushered me right in to my doc's office.

He told me that my white cell count was elevated (125,000) and he suspected that I had leukemia. I literally looked around his office, especially behind me to see who he was talking to.

He got me an appointment with an oncologist within a couple of days who asked my surgeon to remove a lymph node while he was performing my surgury. The surgury was a success and the lymph node revealed that I had leukemia, stage III leaning towards stage IV.

Chemo started right away. 3 treatments a week for 6 months. My oncologist was ahead of the curve and recommended 6 treatments with a monoclonal antibody that was $8,000 per 100mg treatment that my insurance didn't cover. If I had been living in a country with socialized medicine, the option wouldn't have been available to me because of the cost.

My white counts went down and reached a point where I was able to donate 4.2 million of my own stem cells should I ever need a bone marrow transplant.

My oncologist, right from the start kept telling me not to dwell to much on the statistics. Statistics are for populations, not individuals, and she was right. Here I am 12 years later. I have a couple of blood tests a year just to keep an eye on things but for the past 12 years, the resuts of my tests have been well within the "normal" boundries.

For those who are facing cancer now, or may in the future, let me tell you something:

ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING

 

[Douger]

How close has cancer hit you or someone you love?
They say 1 out of 3 women will develop some form of cancer, and even tho it's not the number one killer of women (heart disease is), it ranks very high as the killer of men and women.
It kills more people than obesity. It kills more people than heart attacks/strokes.
I loathe ******* cancer, it's my only enemy in life........I am surrounded by it on both sides of my family and I have had to deal with it personally, in my own body~
I wish they would find something to help with this dreaded jackass disease. More and more children are being stricken with some form of cancer.
Instead of them getting closer to finding a cure, I hear about more and more cases~

Come and see me. I have an indigenous friend that can handle it.

 

[MaggieMae]

I was having blood work done for some minor surgury 12 years ago. My doc called and told me that there was some unspecified problem with the test. I thought that maybe they had lost it and needed more. (a real pain in the arm since it takes an average of 3 sticks to actually get into one of my veins). When I got to the office, they ushered me right in to my doc's office.

He told me that my white cell count was elevated (125,000) and he suspected that I had leukemia. I literally looked around his office, especially behind me to see who he was talking to.

He got me an appointment with an oncologist within a couple of days who asked my surgeon to remove a lymph node while he was performing my surgury. The surgury was a success and the lymph node revealed that I had leukemia, stage III leaning towards stage IV.

Chemo started right away. 3 treatments a week for 6 months. My oncologist was ahead of the curve and recommended 6 treatments with a monoclonal antibody that was $8,000 per 100mg treatment that my insurance didn't cover. If I had been living in a country with socialized medicine, the option wouldn't have been available to me because of the cost.

My white counts went down and reached a point where I was able to donate 4.2 million of my own stem cells should I ever need a bone marrow transplant.

My oncologist, right from the start kept telling me not to dwell to much on the statistics. Statistics are for populations, not individuals, and she was right. Here I am 12 years later. I have a couple of blood tests a year just to keep an eye on things but for the past 22 years, the resuts of my tests have been well within the "normal" boundries.

For those who are facing cancer now, or may in the future, let me tell you something:

ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING

Yes, it is, and also a good rant every now and then releases built-up tension which leads to stress, which won't help recovery. If you need to, find a place out in the woods and let loose with a few primal screams (my doctor's advice!)

Glad to see you've done so well.

 

[Lovebears65]

my husband just lost his mother to stage 4 colon cancer that went to her liver in Nov. His dad died from form of leukemia just 16 months prior. A friend of mine daughter has ALL and another friend lost her son 2 years ago to AML. I hate cancer!

 

[bill5]

You have plenty of company! Sorry for those losses and for anyone who is impacted by these #$@!@ diseases.

 

[waltky]

New leukemia treatment...

'Amazing' therapy wipes out leukemia in study
Aug 10,`11 - Scientists are reporting the first clear success with a new approach for treating leukemia - turning the patients' own blood cells into assassins that hunt and destroy their cancer cells.

They've only done it in three patients so far, but the results were striking: Two appear cancer-free up to a year after treatment, and the third patient is improved but still has some cancer. Scientists are already preparing to try the same gene therapy technique for other kinds of cancer. "It worked great. We were surprised it worked as well as it did," said Dr. Carl June, a gene therapy expert at the University of Pennsylvania. "We're just a year out now. We need to find out how long these remissions last."

He led the study, published Wednesday by two journals, New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine. It involved three men with very advanced cases of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, or CLL. The only hope for a cure now is bone marrow or stem cell transplants, which don't always work and carry a high risk of death. Scientists have been working for years to find ways to boost the immune system's ability to fight cancer. Earlier attempts at genetically modifying bloodstream soldiers called T-cells have had limited success; the modified cells didn't reproduce well and quickly disappeared.

June and his colleagues made changes to the technique, using a novel carrier to deliver the new genes into the T-cells and a signaling mechanism telling the cells to kill and multiply. That resulted in armies of "serial killer" cells that targeted cancer cells, destroyed them, and went on to kill new cancer as it emerged. It was known that T-cells attack viruses that way, but this is the first time it's been done against cancer, June said. For the experiment, blood was taken from each patient and T-cells removed. After they were altered in a lab, millions of the cells were returned to the patient in three infusions.

The researchers described the experience of one 64-year-old patient in detail. There was no change for two weeks, but then he became ill with chills, nausea and fever. He and the other two patients were hit with a condition that occurs when a large number of cancer cells die at the same time - a sign that the gene therapy is working. "It was like the worse flu of their life," June said. "But after that, it's over. They're well."

MORE

 

[Patrick2]

How close has cancer hit you or someone you love?
They say 1 out of 3 women will develop some form of cancer, and even tho it's not the number one killer of women (heart disease is), it ranks very high as the killer of men and women.
It kills more people than obesity. It kills more people than heart attacks/strokes.
I loathe ******* cancer, it's my only enemy in life........I am surrounded by it on both sides of my family and I have had to deal with it personally, in my own body~
I wish they would find something to help with this dreaded jackass disease. More and more children are being stricken with some form of cancer.
Instead of them getting closer to finding a cure, I hear about more and more cases~

I've had extended family members get it. A sore point with me has been that the american people have dumped trillions of dollars on the cancer research establishment for what - 80 years? Where the hell is the cure? Every once in a while they announce something like the leukemnia cure on the news tonight, and then you never hear about it again. I think there needs to be a fundamental review of cancer research in this country, to find out what's wrong. Maybe a few lib media obama shills can tear themselves away from their 24/7 leftwing cheerleading long enough to report on something serious.

 

[bill5]

It's been amazing to see how fast my attitude changed, once I realized that treating cancer even 20 years ago is far, far advanced today. Cancer specialists are also much more aware that they need to treat the emotional side effects and can no longer just shuttle patients through test after test and with a pat on the head just instruct them to do as they say.

Oh many of them still do that, make no mistake. Oncologists and other medical staff vary WIDELY on attitudes and even competency. I know, because taking this journey with my girlfriend I have seen both extremes and all in between, and we've been to some of the most highly-touted cancer centers in the world.

My oncology team constantly assures me that I AM THE BOSS. I am the patient, and if something isn't "working" for me, then it's up to THEM to design therapy around my body blueprint and my comfort zone, not just what's convenient or favored by them in general.

That is how is SHOULD be and I'm glad for you there. But again, many do not do this.

The most important thing I think people need to keep in mind is just what you said above, ie YOU are the boss and most importantly YOU SHOULD BE THE BOSS. I'm not just talking about feeling "comfortable" etc, but in really taking charge of your condition. Read and research all you can, ask a lot of questions (as you said), and never be afraid to question anything. This is your life! Being intimidated into going along with whatever they say without feeling sure it's right could be a very dangerous mistake. Never I do mean NEVER take a single doctor's word for anything. Always, always seek out (at least) a second opinion, if not a third or fourth. Doctors are human and so aren't always right and far from perfect, although some seem to think so.

Treating cancer is often far more an art than a science. Each case is unique and rarely are there pat answers.

/soapbox

Best of luck to anyone dealing with this!

 

[Mr. H.]

My daughter's best friend was diagnosed with "High Risk Pre-B Cell Acute Lymphoblast​ic Leukemia" at age 13. After 3 years she's finally rid of it but still has periodic checkups. It was terrible to watch her and her family deal with the experience.

It prompted me to become an organ donor and I also registered with National Marrow Donor Program - Be The Match Marrow Registry where my DNA profile is kept in hopes of finding a match.

 

[editec]

How close has cancer hit you or someone you love?
They say 1 out of 3 women will develop some form of cancer, and even tho it's not the number one killer of women (heart disease is), it ranks very high as the killer of men and women.
It kills more people than obesity. It kills more people than heart attacks/strokes.
I loathe ******* cancer, it's my only enemy in life........I am surrounded by it on both sides of my family and I have had to deal with it personally, in my own body~
I wish they would find something to help with this dreaded jackass disease. More and more children are being stricken with some form of cancer.
Instead of them getting closer to finding a cure, I hear about more and more cases~

There isn't a person alive whose family history doesn't include cancer deaths, Dabs.

We are ALL surrounded by it, not just you.

Cancers are the # 2 cause of death following heart disease.