Hitching treatments

manwithnoname

Thought this might interest some people.
pasted from curetoday.com

Suzanne Lindley has become so busy that her husband, Ronnie, added a tracking device to her cell phone so he could keep up with her—not the life you’d expect from someone living with metastatic colon cancer. Just recently Lindley was in Florida for the Daytona 500, then on to Washington, D.C., to testify before a health subcommittee exploring radiation therapy. The next week she was back in Texas, loading horses for a rodeo, where her 19-year-old daughter Karlie was performing, before heading out for a spring vacation with Ronnie, Karlie, and 22-year-old daughter Katie.



“I am one lucky girl,” Lindley says. Lucky, yes, but also determined and dedicated. Diagnosed in 1998 with colon cancer that had metastasized to her liver, Lindley, then 31, was told that the only drug available didn’t offer much hope; she had six months to live.

Around 20 percent of cancer patients diagnosed annually in the U.S. have distant or advanced disease, meaning that their cancer has spread, or “metastasized,” to a different site from the original tumor. Some patients are diagnosed with metastatic cancer; others are treated for a local cancer that comes back, or recurs, at a distant site. A number of factors, including where the cancer metastasizes, available treatment, an individual tumor’s biological makeup, and how the patient responds to treatment determine how long the patient survives and his or her quality of life.

Lindley is an example of the growing number of “chronic” metastatic patients, a relatively new group who are alive because they were diagnosed on the crest of emerging targeted therapies, drug combinations, surgical options, and radiation treatments to which their tumors responded.

These patients have benefited from being able to “hitchhike,” meaning when one treatment stops working, they can move to the next. Advances in supportive care have also helped minimize side effects, so patients are given hope, time, and a quality of life that eases living while still living on the edge, waiting for the next new treatment to come along.


rest here; http://www.curetoday.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/journey.showArticle/id/9/enableStageSubMenu/6/article_id/1463

janie1

I suppose in the next few
I suppose in the next few years more will be done about analyzing the tumor make-up.
I've left a ton of tumor for someone to test. My surgeon at Sloan said it will be there in case down the road it is needed for something like that. Now that's encouraging. What about now?
TaraHK is on Gemzar (not typically used) and doing well. I dont know if the tumor was tested to see what works.
She lives in Hong Kong. Valuable time can be wasted giving someone (i dont know if u call it off label) a drug that you dont know will work until the next scan in 2 months.
Seems like not too difficult to do.
I wish institutions in U.S. would do more regarding this. Wonder what the rationale could be.

manwithnoname

janie1 said:

I suppose in the next few
I suppose in the next few years more will be done about analyzing the tumor make-up.
I've left a ton of tumor for someone to test. My surgeon at Sloan said it will be there in case down the road it is needed for something like that. Now that's encouraging. What about now?
TaraHK is on Gemzar (not typically used) and doing well. I dont know if the tumor was tested to see what works.
She lives in Hong Kong. Valuable time can be wasted giving someone (i dont know if u call it off label) a drug that you dont know will work until the next scan in 2 months.
Seems like not too difficult to do.
I wish institutions in U.S. would do more regarding this. Wonder what the rationale could be.

Hi Joan
There are a few places that will test tumours, I think the most accurate is with a 'live' sample tested just after surgery, because of logistics we couldn't do it so we chose Proteomic testing from Houston. (not cheap)
There is also a clinic in Greece, the price is reasonable and they will also test herbs and other 'alternative' things.
http://www.rgcc-genlab.com

The results from Houston were the same drugs I had found by researching, but it took me months of reading.

I can't believe we need to do all of this privately, it should be standard practice IMHO, even though I believe every tumour is unique, just like us, there are drugs that I think may be suitable for all.
Celecoxib and maybe Metformin, Thalidomide, Melatonin, Avastin.

HDAC inhibitor valproic acid is very interesting and easy to get, histone's seem to play a crucial part in all cancer.

I think you need someone to take charge and formulate a plan, there are a lot of drugs and a lot of options.

janderson1964

Thanks for posting this
Thanks for posting this encouraging article.