Cancer Survivors

Thanks Perdition, we'll keep telling those cells that resistance is futile ... resistance is futile ...

Hi ramoss,Thanks, I'll print your avatar and hang it up in the infusion room to encourage the troops.Enjoy.

Hi Crashfrog, thanks (and thanks to everyone else too) Yes, he's had several very direct cartoons on cancer that imply this.As far as this goes, I've had my port put in, a small subcutanous device that makes hooking up the IV much simpler and less invasive, plus safer (considering that many of these drugs can be toxic to skin).I had my first round last Tuesday. Wednesday was sort of okay, although I was tired. TFS and today I have been plagued with semi-nausea and some aches in the area of my kidneys (they could be under strain if a lot of cells are dying, so it's a mixed message).The next treatment is next Tuesday, and I will take the opportunity to see about pain medication and anti-nausea pills.All this and income tax Enjoy.

Yesterday I finished my fourth of four treatments in my latest battle against my cancer, met with my oncologist, and the prognosis is good, fairly certainly for the next year. That means 7+ years surviving with an incurable cancer due to the marvels of modern medicine.Today, this morning, my dad died of complications due to prostrate cancer and the treatments for it that left him weak and liable to fall. What one hand gives the other taketh away.Sorry if I'm a little out of sorts.Paul

Hi crashfrog. I believe today's strip confirms this" Feel pretty much the same about it, though mine started in 2005 and I'm a bit further on learning to live with it. The white ?? area for me is bucket list stuff, things I really want to do, etc.Posting here helps too.Enjoy.

Cancers back, this time with some lymphedema:

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Lymphedema (lymphoedema in British English), also known as lymphatic obstruction, is a condition of localized fluid retention and tissue swelling caused by a compromised lymphatic system. The lymphatic system returns the interstitial fluid to the thoracic duct and then to the bloodstream, where it is recirculated back to the tissues. Tissues with lymphedema are at risk of infection.

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Symptoms may include severe fatigue, a heavy swollen limb or localized fluid accumulation in other body areas, including the head or neck, discoloration of the skin overlying the lymphedema, and eventually deformity (elephantiasis).

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Lymph is formed from the fluid that filters out of the blood circulation to nourish your cells. This fluid returns through venous capillaries to the blood circulation through the force of osmosis in the venous blood, however, a portion of the fluid which contains proteins, cellular debris, bacteria etc. must return through the lymphatic collection system in order to maintain tissue fluid balance. The collection of this pre-lymph fluid is carried out by the initial lymph collectors which are blind ended epithelial lined vessels with fenestrated openings that allow fluids and particles as large as cells to enter. Once inside the lumen of the lymphatic vessels the fluid is guided along increasingly larger vessels, first with rudimentary valves to prevent backflow which later develop into complete valves similar to the venous valve. Once the lymph enters the fully valved lymphatic vessels it is pumped by a rhythmic peristaltic like action by smooth muscle cells within the lymphatic vessel walls. It is this peristaltic action which is the primary driving force, moving lymph within its vessel walls. The regulation of the frequency and power of contraction is regulated by the sympathetic nervous system. The movement of lymph can also be influenced by the pressure of nearby muscle contraction, arterial pulse pressure and the vacuum creased in the chest cavity during respiration, however, these passive forces contribute only a minor percentage of lymph transport. The fluids collected are pumped into continually larger vessels and through lymph nodes which clean out debris and police the fluid for potential threats from dangerous microbes. The lymph ends its journey in the thoracic duct where it re-enters the blood circulation.

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Exercise helps the lymph system to operate, and this is why it improves your immune system.Loading your system up with junk (alcohol?) impedes the lymph system by adding to the work load.Tomorrow I start chemo again, with an aggressive approach that takes 4 days a session with one session a month for 4 to 6 months (depending on response).Sadly this will mean I miss my annual birthday ride for a friend (64 miles this year), although it was looking like I wouldn't be completing it anyway with my levels of energy and fatigue.I will have wifi for the duration, so I will likely still be posting here.Thanks

Hi Asgara Yes, we have an open membership format, including care-givers and just people that care. :cry:Sad to hear that. My uncle Walt had that (among other health problems). Ports are the way to go. Do you know yet what are you getting?I was dropped from the clinical study because it failed to prevent an incident of lyphedema in the whole right leg (swoll up like a water balloon), and am now on another treatment.I am now on day 3 of 5 day 24 hour treatment that needs to be repeated for four months -- 1 week in hosp and 3 weeks off. My new umbilical cord, and my coffee machine (at least this isn't ICU and I can have my morning coffee when I wake up) Or be cured! (let's get that stem cell research going).Enjoy.

Hi again AsgaraI just got unplugged so I will be home tomorrow ... until the next round next month anyway. Just to say that the first time is the scariest -- you don't know what's going on and you've heard all the horror stories. It passes. It becomes your new normal. You will survive.Enjoy.

Hi Asgara, I also get a lot of ultrasounds, recently of my liver and heart to make sure they weren't being compromised. Looked like those TV shots of baby ultrasounds with a weird kid inside . Yeah, I was in denial my first time.As long as we can hang on there are new remedies being constantly developed. The latest I heard was doing full DNA and RNA typing to see what areas were causing the cancer -- it was being done by a group looking at leukemia, and one of the doctors realized that he had it himself ... he said the floor dropped out from under him. But the put him in the study and sequenced it all and found a section in his RNA that was producing a protein that was causing the cancer, more astounding there was already a drug approved to treat it, and he is in full remission.As sequencing continues to drop in cost and time to run I see this becoming a standard part of cancer treatment - isolating the sub-types of cancers and their loci, and focusing the treatments there.A future thanks to the knowledge gained through biological science.Enjoy.

Hi Asgara,That has been like my normal experiences with chemo. Keep it up.This last time, however, has been my worst to date, with nausea and cramps persisting for days. I seem to be coming out of it now, but it's almost a week since the 4 day 24 hour infusion stopped. Got home Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning were okay, but the afternoon, all day Sunday and Monday were agony. I couldn't keep anything down (a Tums came back so fast it was still sweet and minty) and finally resorted to medical marijuana (RI lets you register to use it with a doctors approval) and it cleared up. I was amazed.PaulEdited by RAZD, : .

Thanks onifre, Problem I had was everything was coming back up - a single Tums was back so fast that it was still sweet and minty. Smoke was the only option.I now have a vapor-blunt that heats the weed to 300* to vaporize the active and all you inhale is enhanced air, no heat, no smoke or ash. Pretty cool.Enjoy

Well things are going a little better this round (#2 in the series of 4 day long treatments), as I've been able to preemptively hold off the constipation and nausea by diet and attacking the first signs. This is day 4 now, but I have some other stuff to get before they let me out (sometime tomorrow). Having brownies in the backpack helped, but so did the figs ... Mentally my sudoku score times are a little up, so I know I have some chemo-brain effect going on, and I've been trying to keep my posts short and to the point as a result.Hair loss seems to have halted with some bare patches in funny places.Overall better than round 1 was.Hope you are doing well Asgara.Enjoy.

Good to hear Asgara, keep strong.I have had Neulasta before and will be getting some today and tomorrow for same reasons, to boost my new white cell growth. I have not experienced any severe symptoms from it beyond the initial injection.I am now waiting to be discharged.Enjoy.

Hi all,I am just starting (day 1 of) round 3 of this program of chemotherapy. The first day is fairly benign, but the side effects of nausea, constipation and fatigue build up day by day, so that by day 5 it is at the maximum. In the first week following this also reaches another peak the second or third day after treatment ceases, as some drugs that counter these effects are purged while the others that cause the effects are still there, being flushed out at a slower rate. The second week following is where the effects have stopped and energy improves ... peaking just in time to start again.Thus you can expect my posting to taper off and stop for a couple days before reviving ... in synchrony with the tides treatment cycles.You can also expect that the quality of my posts may follow a similar pattern (possibly with a slight delay) due the effect known as chemobrain.Not surprisingly, I firmly believe that long term chemobrain was at least partly responsible for my mother's dementia, and the loss of memory that appeared shortly after treatment for breast cancer, especially the second time, when she had some bad side effects of a treatment.These drugs are toxic (in some cases the nurses wear hazmat protection when handling them), with the older ones being generally toxic to all cells and the new ones becoming more and more targeted to specific cells and proteins.This prospect scares\alarms\disturbs me, and it is certainly one of the reasons I have become increasingly interested in cognitive functioning (dysfunction, dissonance etc ).In previous discussion with my oncologist, he noted that it normally is mild and temporary for lymphoma treatments, but varies from person to person and treatment to treatment. He doesn't think I will get any permanent loss.To test for this, I play timed games of sudoku, and I can see some increase in a running average (over last 10 games) times during treatment and slightly afterwards, but I have also seen return to pretreatment levels after that. I have even set new (single game) record low times after treatment, so overall trend does not appear to show any long term effect in this regard.In recent discussions he noted that we could stop this treatment at 4 rounds, or continue for 6 rounds, with some improved possibility for a longer remission period before the next battle with the longer treatment.We will get a cat-scan after the 4th round to see the net effect and make the decision then. My inclination is to stay the course for 6 rounds (ending November 15th rather than October 4th). Something to give thanks for.Longer remission also means more chances for new therapies and greater possibly for an actual cure for my type of cancer (follicular lymphoma) -- especially if stem cell research is opened up to use undifferentiated fetal stem cells in transplants.Not too surprisingly, I'll take every minute I can get.This is an example of the kind of thing I am talking about in regards to potential new cures:Marijuana Fights Cancer and Helps Manage Side Effects, Researchers Find

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Instead of gaining insight into how cells function, Sanchez had stumbled upon the anti-cancer properties of THC. In 1998, she reported in a European biochemistry journal that THC induces apoptosis [cell death] in C6 glioma cells, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
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A team of Spanish scientists led by Manuel Guzman conducted the first clinical trial assessing the antitumoral action of THC on human beings. Guzman administered pure THC via a catheter into the tumors of nine hospitalized patients with glioblastoma, who had failed to respond to standard brain-cancer therapies. The results were published in 2006 in the British Journal of Pharmacology: THC treatment was associated with significantly reduced tumor cell proliferation in every test subject.
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Dr. Sean McAllister, a scientist at the Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, has been studying cannabinoid compounds for 10 years in a quest to develop new therapeutic interventions for various cancers. Backed by grants from the National Institute of Health (and with a license from the DEA), McAllister discovered that cannabidiol (CBD), a nonpsychoactive component of the marijuana plant, is a potent inhibitor of breast cancer cell proliferation, metastasis, and tumor growth.

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In 2007, McAllister published a detailed account of how cannabidiol kills breast cancer cells and destroys malignant tumors by switching off expression of the ID-1 gene, a protein that appears to play a major role as a cancer cell conductor.

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The ID-1 gene is active during human embryonic development, after which it turns off and stays off. But in breast cancer and several other types of metastatic cancer, the ID-1 gene becomes active again, causing malignant cells to invade and metastasize.

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Finding that specific genes are targeted by cannabinoids with positive results.Please note how long the process takes to get from discovery to study to application in treatments. This can be a problem for those of us with an existing condition, and facing the prospect of not having years to wait for cures that are being researched and studied.Also note that -- thanks to OBAMACARE -- people will no longer be refused insurance coverage due to a "pre-existing" condition ... and this stuff is expensive, very expensive.ASGARA (and others fighting this battle):See sections on tumor reductions, blood proteins and other beneficial effects. This is a very hopeful article for many, so you may want to share this information to friends and families (yes, even the religious and conservative types -- synthetic compounds (cannabinoids) remove the normal psychoactive effects -- and yes Buz, it is a natural organic cure). In many places cannabinoids can be prescribed.For myself and my brothers, I also have to wonder how well it works on prostrate cancer, especially once it is metastasizing ... a whether it could have helped dad (the family history also includes dad's father dying from prostrate cancer ... albeit at 96 ... ).I know that I would be interested in participating in a clinical study of the effect on blood cancers (lymphomas, leukemias, etc).ANDI'd do it FOR SCIENCE !!! (of course).EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : clrty

Hi Onifre,So you should be well inoculated eh?Enjoy