Anyone else?

After my husband got cancer, I was a depressed mess. Everyone said "stay off the internet, don't google, blah blah" 

Well, what I discovered in all of that depression and googling,  is that every day there is new discoveries and break throughs in treating cancer. My internet searches and readings daily affirmed that indeed we are moving forward. Especially in kidney cancer. In 2000, I think there was only 1 approved treatment for Kidney cancer or maybe one more. Instead of getting depressed, I became educated and empowered with the knowledge. The cure is close, you have to believe it. 

Thanks to all those who make it possible, yes, I believe the same

Stomps & Friends,

An unconscionable amount of patients are still lopped into the "BIG 3" of treatments for cancer: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.  These treatments are going on 120 to 75 years old.  What's happened in 75 years?  A computer was once the size of small house and did rudimentary calculations.  Now, we have phones that are 8 millimeters thick and talk to us in seconds.  People watched "I Love Lucy" on TV screens that were 6 inches wide (about the same as an iPhone 6 Plus) and they watch "The Big Bang Theory" on TVs 70 inches wide in High Definition.  The only thing where technology and research seems to have stalled is in the cancer field.  

Now, I don't buy into all the nonsense about "conspiracies."  But I do think that the big issue with the medical field is that doctors just get too rolled up into their "specialties" and won't consider other things.  New and innovative approaches to medicine are often called "quackery" by those who would hang onto their prescribed methods.  How many people have we seen on this board have to undergo a maiming, "open" procedure for their surgery because their only option is a doctor who has refused to be trained in laparoscopic or robotic techniques?  Doctors are just too resistant to learning new things sometimes.  Imagine in your job if they got a new computer system and you refused to use it and you hung on to your old one, being the only one in the office not to embrace change.  You'd be FIRED, right?  

Look at my son's clubfoot, for example.  The methods used are called the "Ponseti method" after Dr. Ignatius Ponseti.  It took, LITERALLY, 50 YEARS of him doing this method before it became a standard in care for clubfoot.  As little as TEN YEARS AGO doctors were still breaking babies' bones and doing complex surgeries to try to correct clubfoot, often causing more harm then good.  Because they get so worked up into their own EGO that they refuse to consider other options.  I have never seen a field in which learning new methods and embracing new research is so frowned upon.

If there's an "conspiracy," it's of IGNORANCE.  I know that's a tough word, but doctors sometimes need to get their heads out of their A$$E$ and be open to new approaches and new research.  You hear too many stories of things being suppressed or put on the back burner because other doctors don't accept it.  And that's just ridiculous.  We ARE on the cusp of a new frontier of cancer research, and I DO believe that we are about to see a great explosion of new treatments.  But everyone in the field needs to embrace it.  What these treatments are going to cost is an argument for another time...

- Jay  

Researchers have created a blood test that can find snippets of the Cancer DNA.  It can help avoid a biopsy and give oncologists an early lead in Dx and type of treatment to use.  Now that's progress.

donna_lee

I cringe thinking about people who have trusted the wrong doctors. And they are no longer here to discuss this.... I may be the luckiest one. I went from, "there is nothing we can do," and "you've got 6 months to live," to "Welcome to the nivo trial."  I have since had some problems but with todays treatments that are available, I'm still here 5 years later. And I will tell you that the way I feel now, tells me, that I'll be here awhile. Very lucky indeed.

Stomps, I don't recall exactly which paper, so I just typed in "Cancer DNA blood test"  and up popped a list of research info.  One in China and several in the US.  It seems that even cancer cells shed into the blood, so they can look at the DNA in those cells and find out what kind of tumor (in a limited number of cancers), look at if it's genetic cancer and sometimes determine which chemo or treatment would be appropriate.

That's the kind of info that fits right into our upcoming Relay for Life, with a theme of Mission Possible.

Hope this info leads you someplace successful.

donna_lee

good news about Keytruda and lung cancer, so there's a start.

Donna~

I'm there, too, sitting on that edge...  Recently diagnosed, I will find out next week when surgery will be.  DaVinci is exciting, even the little clips that go on the sutures are way cool (OK, I'm a bit of a developmental technology nerd, having grown up in a home with a dad who was a project / research / development engineer finding answers to things, many of which are common knowledge nowadays).  So many of the things we did 50 years ago, today we simply shake our heads about (and I'm sure a bunch of today's Best Practices will make us wince in 10 or 20 years). 

In the '70s, a geneticist told me he figured most people who 50 years before had died of "natural causes" most likely died of cancer.  We've come so far, still having folks who want to find answers -- and then better answers -- is amazing. 

To health, research, treatment, development, and all the good stuff -- Jerzy