Cancer Survivors Network

I am 35, diagnosed with my second melanoma, this time it was stage 4 tumor on my lung. Thank God my lymph nodes didnt appear to be enlarged. I had 3 lymph nodes removed the 1st time, 5years ago,and they were all good. I had the melanoma on my left arm for 5 years and was misdiagnosed. The 1st doctor to look at it thought it was a patch of exema and gave me a stearoid cream. It was pink in color and looked harmless. That is until it grew when i got pregnant with my 3rd child. It grew into a tumor on the outside of my arm and would bleed if anything touched it too long. Just have my arm folded would cause that. It still looked harmless even to the dermatologist. I finally had it removed after my son was born,only because everytime he laid his head on my arm, it would bleed. It became an annoyance. Wow, what a shocker to find it was melanoma.
I started leukine in June. Its pretty rough. Doing the injection in the legs became too painful and the swelling was awful. So I began doing it at night, before bed and only in the stomach, wow, what a difference. The spot is a little irritated and itchy, but I rub benadryl gel on it and its fine. I thought by doing it at bed time, by body had time to rest before stressing it more. Of course the aches are pretty bad for the 1st week of each treatment. I am experiencing weakness the legs right now. Dont like that too much. I am a fairly active person and this is making me very inactive.
I keep reminding myself only 7 left now. next month i can say only 6 left....... I am just giving my self a huge, vitamin c like shot........

I was also diagnosed with melanoma on my arm in 2005, after having a pink lump there for 9 months - something akin to a large solid blister. I had it surgically removed.2 of the sentinel lymph nodes tested positive - so stage 3. The following month the rest of the lymph nodes were removed and were clear.

As I am very sensitive to drugs, I felt that Interferon wasn't on option - and preferred the results I could see on the Leukine research. Since February 2006, I have been injecting myself with Leukine - it has affected my thyroid levels, making me very tired (until the thyroid medication was altered) increases fluid retention (and thus affects my blood pressure), however I have also seen moles on my body shrink and fade.

Like the others mentioned here I found that I was getting huge lumps from the injection sites - up to 7 inches across and stopping me from walking at times. I tried Benadryl, but it had no effect. However Claritin (for hives) works very successfully, and keeps the site reactions to a bearable small area. I gave up injecting in my stomach as that really didn't work for me. The site reactions were always much worse there.

I found that sitting still for 15 minutes or so after the injection was essential to coping with the pain that comes in my legs immediately after injecting, and also found that injecting at bed time works best for me.

I now only have 3.5 treatments to go, and have found that my body is tolerating them much easier than in the early days. I no longer get so tired or find my joints ache so much. I thought in August that I would never be able to complete the course, but now it looks possible.

My husband (28) has been doing the same Leukine treatment (14 days on / 14 days off) for one year plus. He has 3 more years of this treatment to go. But is heavily questioning it. At this point the drug has made him numb. Lacks joy in all he does. Has him beat down. He just had to take a month break from the drug. This is his first time using this drug in this way. Pereviously it was a one-time injection after a long bout of chemo. And am surprised to see that this is prescribed in this fashion regularly. We were under the impression from his doctor that use like this is unheard. It is nice to have a site like this.

How is this drug being tolerated by you/your wife/your son when used over
a long period of time ( year +) like this?

Have you found it to be successful (what rate) with melanoma?
Does anyone know of cord blood/stem cell use?

jhogue

I have just seen your message and wanted to tell you that I had the full year's treatment of Leukine. It seems to have been successful, as here I am 4 years after I had the melanoma, and have had no recurrences.

You can see details of my cancer and experience with Leukine just above your message.

I hope it is going well for your wife.