A Fantastic Cancer Voyage Chapter 1 I

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

One of my fondest memories as a kid is watching the movie FANTASTIC VOYAGE with my dad while eating peanut butter toast and drinking hot chocolate.

In the movie, a group of scientists and their ultra-futuristic laser-packing “submarine” are reduced to cell size and injected into the blood vessels of a world diplomat in order to destroy a blood clot in his brain. Of course, they succeed in the nick of time JUST before the shrink ray effect wears off and the ship (and the people) grow back to normal size – having a slightly detrimental effect on the world leader into whose head they were injected.

What would a FANTASTIC VOYAGE: Breast Cancer look like?

Well, seeing that I’m a writer and this is my blog, I’m going to try something new (like the BREAST CANCER RESEARCH NOW! feature). I’m going to write a novel here, short chapter by short chapter and I’m going to include the latest research and I’m going to imagine the entire story here for your delectation. Likely it WON’T be once a month – that will all depend on how my wife’s continuing cancer progress moves. She has changed hospitals (more on that next week after the first visit) due to continuing issues with travel time and…services that seem to be lacking there, as well as doctors who say, “You don’t have any symptoms, so you must be fine.” At any rate, more on The Move next Saturday.

For now:

Chapter 1

“Why would we risk all-out war with the SinoIndian Arc just for one person?” Alex Benton asked.

Dr. Olubunmi Nwagbara shook her head and said, “She’s more than a single person. And she has aggressive triple-negative breast cancer. We’ve tried the usual treatments, but it’s a rare form and it’s going to kill her unless we do something drastic.”

Benton sat down in his swivel chair and leaned back, looking out the window. The last stages of a Minnesota winter gusted sleety snow against it, streaking the smoky glass. A steady stream of ground traffic far below moved in the afternoon crush of rush hour. His office on the recently completed Thirty-First Floor was not only a mark of his meteoric rise – it was currently a pain in his backside. “What’s so special about this woman that we have to risk world war to treat her?”

Olubunmi – Ohloo to her close friends – opened her mouth to reply.

Benton waved her reply away as if he were swatting at carrion flies as he said, “I know she’s supposed to be ‘The Last Best Hope For Peace In The World’ but why her?” This time he looked at Ohloo.

She pursed her lips then looked out into the grayness of the late winter storm. Finally she said, “Have you ever heard her speak?”

His lips thinned then he shook his head. “I don’t have time to waste on fluffy New-Age nonsense.”

Ohloo checked her irritation. She’d worked Benton for nearly a decade – not worked “with” as he’d never been a team player – but she’d learned how to direct his considerable energy and determination. She took a deep breath and said, “What she says is more than fluffy, Lex.”

He shot her a look. They rarely engaged in simple nicknames. He said, “She says she’s a Catholic-Buddhist-Hindu-Daoist! As a long-time Catholic, I find that offensive!”

Ohloo smiled and said, “As a life-long evangelical Christian, there are parts of me that cringe at that designation, too. But...”

“There’s no ‘but’ in Catholicism!” His glare narrowed, “I didn’t think there was much wiggle room in evangelicalism, either.”

“As far as belief goes, there isn’t. But what Master An has done...”

He waved her away again. “I know what she’s done. I can skim the websites as easily as you can.”

“Then you know why we have to try this.”

“I also know what Beijing and New Delhi are saying and right now it’s their opinion – and their covert operations people – who have my attention. What are we supposed to do about that? I can’t risk turning Rochester into a war zone! We have sick people here!”

Ohloo said quietly, “Master An is also sick. Her cancer is inoperable right now and she has, at last report, possibly four weeks or a bit more left before she dies.”

“So? One more wacko mystic dying shouldn’t be our concern!”

“As far as I can tell, she’s not a ‘wacko mystic’. She’s a good woman – and our treatment may very well work.”

He snorted, glaring out the window. Finally he said, “I don’t see how uploading your brain into a microscopic submarine in her bloodstream is going to help destroy the cancer.” Ohloo opened her mouth to respond, but he cut her off with a gesture again. “I know. I’ve watched FANTASTIC VOYAGE, also. It was one of my favorite movies as a kid. But this isn’t a movie and it’s not a science fiction story. It’s real, and we’re talking about real medicine here.”

“I am too, Lex. I think I can do this.”

He grunted and without looking at her, he said, “I think you can, too.” He spun in his chair and stood abruptly and walked past her, “But if you die, Ohloo, I’ll never speak to you again.”

The doors opened with a STAR TREK whoosh! and he was gone. Dr. Ohloo watched the slush slap the windows of the Gonda building. Smiling faintly, she said, “Why Lex, I didn’t know you cared.”

Image: http://medgadget.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/Fantastic-Voyage-200x290.jpg

BREAST CANCER RESEARCH RIGHT NOW! 3: Smallpox?!?!?!?!?!?!?

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

Every month, I’ll be highlighting breast cancer research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites, journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and share them with you. Today: http://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/article/42235.htm

Use SMALLPOX TO STOP BREAST CANCER????

OMG! OMG! OMG! When will it stop????? Won’t we all get smallpox now????

*sigh*

I can just hear the reactionary right and the ludicrous left going ballistic if this were to ever get beyond the mouse-testing phase.

Of course, it’s perfectly all right to use a deadly neurotoxin producing bacterium, Clostridium botulinum to make sure my face don’t get all wrinkly as I age. (Oops – I can’t have an opinion on this because I’m a big, old, fat, white guy and I don’t know and cannot possibly understand how the culture and society that has been fostered by, used by and perpetuated by ME (personally) – could possibly understand why I would feel compelled to inject my face with a protein so deadly, “…that one-millionth of a gram of them can kill a man and one pint would be enough to kill everyone on earth.”) -- but SMALLPOX?

Smallpox is a disease that was certified in 1980 by the World Health Organization as eradicated from Human populations. A true scourge of Humanity, it has existed in one form or another since 10,000 years before the Common Era and caused the death of an estimated 300,000,000 people, most of them children. Its relatives abound in the world and while not all of them are lethal to Humans, all but the most common still exist.

Smallpox – Variola major and Variola minor are certifiably deadly, far more deadly than Clostridium botulinum – but with a potential to bring far more help and hope than botulism ever did!

One of the relatives of the smallpox viruses has the creative name, GLV-1h164 has been used to attack a particularly nasty form of breast cancer. “Triple-negative” breast cancer “...is an aggressive form of breast cancer that accounts for between 10 percent and 20 percent of all cases. Younger women (under 35) are the most vulnerable, as are black and Hispanic women.”

These kind of breast cancers, while they maintain a relatively low profile because of their relative rarity, have proven a difficult cluster of diseases to conquer. We can’t even control them.

Most breast cancers respond to hormonal therapy by allowing cancer toxins to attach directly to the cells and kill them. Triple-negative breast cancer cells are NOT sensitive to hormonal therapy, nor are they destroyed by immune therapy.

In the initial tests, “...roughly 60 percent of the triple-negative breast cancer tumors shrank...while the other 40 percent showed evidence of tumor cell death...”

The use of cousins of smallpox seems to be effective, at least in current trials. Is it wise to hold such a small hope that good could come from group of terrifying scourges?

Absolutely YES! Let’s hope the continued research leads to a powerful weapon against triple-negative breast cancers!

Image: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/featuremedia/feature103/Smallpox.jpg

Breast Cancer. Lung Cancer. Liver Cancer. Skin Cancer. Are All Cancers Created Equal?

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

My wife and her sister are breast cancer survivors.

My wife’s mother died of lung cancer.

My wife’s brother has liver cancer.

My sister, sister-in-law, brother and dad have had skin cancer.

Are all cancers created equal? Are some “worse” than others? Are some more survivable? Are some “the worst kind of cancer to have”?

First order of business is to define cancer in a general way. Most people “know” that cancer happens when cells grow out of control.

But is this general wisdom correct? From the American Cancer Society: “Cancer is the general name for a group of more than 100 diseases. Although there are many kinds of cancer, all cancers start because abnormal cells grow out of control. Untreated cancers can cause serious illness and death.”

By way of comparison, from the Cancer Council of Australia: “Cancer is a disease of the body's cells. Normally cells grow and multiply in a controlled way, however, if something causes a mistake to occur in the cells' genetic blueprints, this control can be lost. Cancer is the term used to describe collections of these cells, growing and potentially spreading within the body. As cancerous cells can arise from almost any type of tissue cell, cancer actually refers to about 100 different diseases.”

And from the Chinese Anti-Cancer Association: “Jia Kun, a Chinese traditional medicine oncologist writing in 1980, says that whatever upsets normal body function can lead to tumor formation, causing cancer. Tumors are the end result of a prolonged process of accumulation and densification of tissue due to the persistent stagnation of qi and blood, which, if unrelieved, becomes toxic, critically damaging the healthy function of the organ systems.” [My half hour search of the website did not turn up a clear definition of what Chinese medicine considers a ‘tumor’.]

At any rate, it seems pretty clear that the world knows that there is SOMETHING going on no matter how you explain it.

As to the “worst” cancers, this article published two years ago on MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39102353/ns/health-cancer/t/top-deadliest-cancers-why-theres-no-cure/) rates the cancers based on the number of deaths. Other factors that work into this are how common a cancer is determines if there are treatments and detectability of the cancer can also affect how deadly it is.

As I wrote two weeks ago, “…cancers of ALL TYPES need to be destroyed…”

Today’s oncologists can identify some 100 cancers. But how? And HOW does cancer start?

“Cancer…does not develop all at once as a massive shift in cellular functions that results from a mutation in one or two wayward genes. Instead, it develops step-by-step, across time, as an accumulation of many molecular changes, each contributing some of the characteristics that eventually produce the malignant state…the time frame involved also is very long— it normally takes decades to accumulate enough mutations to reach a malignant state...Cancer is, for the most part, a disease of people who have lived long enough to have experienced a complex and extended succession of events…each [cell] change is a rare accident requiring years to occur, the whole process takes a very long time, and most of us die from other causes before it is complete…[P]eople who experience unusual exposure to carcinogens... inherit predisposing mutations…increases the likelihood that certain harmful changes will occur…[and] developing cancer during a normal life span…[I]nheriting a cancer-susceptibility mutation means [it has happened in] all the body's cells. In other words, the process of tumor formation…may take place in one or two [decades]…[C]ancer as a multistep process also explains the lag time that often separates exposure to a cancer-causing agent and the development of cancer.”

The how and why and where are fairly well understood today. Doctors, molecular biologists, geneticists, biotechnology experts and oncologists are working constantly to meet the 100 different cancers head on, to understand the mechanisms that cause them – and finally to create a strategy that will not only slow the progress of cancer cell growth down, but stop every form of cancer in its tracks by discovering the key to shutting cancer down.

Resources: http://www.chinese-medicineworks.com/pdfs/cancercmbeinfieldkorngold.pdf, https://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih1/cancer/guide/understanding2.htm

Image: http://www.omnimedicalsearch.com/conditions-diseases/images/cancercells.jpg

When Are You Back Up To Full Speed? Pick e) All of the above

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

Working full-time as a classroom aide for a kindergarten class is a draining experience even for the young and able-bodied! The classroom teacher is a young woman with loads of energy, enthusiasm and ideas – and SHE is often worn out at the end of the day! How could my wife possibly expect to keep up with her – as well as chasing after 25 five-going-on-six little kids, and closely monitoring and recording data on one child in the class who needs LOTS of supervision?

She works at the elementary school in the district with THE highest level of poverty. The neighborhood her school is in is primarily made up of apartments, has an airport, several vacant lots, one partially burned out gas station, suburban row houses all built within weeks of each other in 1956 and beginning to look their age. The environment is dilapidated, the school is dilapidated, the charter school next door to her school siphons off the best and the brightest leaving her school with more than its fair share of challenges.

She comes home exhausted every day and wonders when she’s going to feel better. Lymphedema is a concern still – nah, it’s downright worrisome. Yesterday she broke out in hives because she didn’t rinse out her compression sleeve well enough – because she was tired. Her feet are sore. Her knees and joints are sore (though that has gotten better since she’s gone gluten free) and she doesn’t remember feeling this crappy BEFORE the surgery, chemo and recovery.

So when WILL she feel like she used to? When will she feel normal?

In a transcript of a panel discussion on “Life After Breast Cancer” posted at http://secondopinion-tv.org/episode/life-after-breast-cancer, one of the panelists notes, “It's not possible to ‘flip a switch’ and immediately go back to a former life at full throttle. The body is in repair mode and women have to pace themselves. In fact, it may take a year or more to regain a sufficient level of energy and sense of well-being.”

Debbie Woodbury, commenting on a question at Talk About Health (http://talkabouthealth.com/how-long-did-it-take-for-you-to-feel-normal-again-after-breast-cancer-or-do-you-ever-feel-normal-again) points out: “Emotionally, it took even longer [than a year] to heal, but I will never be the same as I was before the cancer...no cancer survivor I've ever talked to...has ever told me that they were able to return to the normal life they had before they were diagnosed. It just doesn't happen. Cancer redefines normal.”

What exactly is a repair mode? Technically “recovery” has to do with the initial surgical recovery, but, “After your cancer treatment, as a cancer survivor you're eager to return to good health. But beyond your initial recovery, there are ways to improve your long-term health so that you can enjoy the years ahead as a cancer survivor. The recommendations for cancer survivors are no different from the recommendations for anyone who wants to improve his or her health: Exercise, eat a balanced diet, maintain a healthy weight, avoid tobacco and limit the amount of alcohol you drink. But for cancer survivors, these strategies have added benefits. These simple steps can improve your quality of life, smoothing your transition into survivorship.”

This is recovery.

“But doctor, will I ever be able to play the violin after I recover?”

“Of course!”

“That’s amazing! I never played it before the surgery!”

Ba dum bum. Everything people have blogged leads me to believe that the repair mode of post-cancer recovery is long and difficult. Of COURSE you feel better than you did immediately after surgery. It seems like things are getting better fast. But that’s different. Cancer is invasive and if you’ve undergone a prolonged chemo or radiation therapy, then your entire body has been weakened – from head to toe.

“You may have permanent scars on your body, or you may not be able to do some things you once did easily. Or you may even have emotional scars from going through so much. You may find that others think of you differently now - or you may view yourself in a different way…”, “...those who have gone through cancer treatment describe the first few months as a time of change...finding out what's normal for you now. People often say that life has new meaning or that they look at things differently now. You can also expect things to keep changing as you begin your recovery. Your new ‘normal may include making changes in the way you eat, the things you do, and your sources of support...follow-up care. Should I tell the doctor about symptoms that worry me? Which doctors should I see after treatment? How often should I see my doctor? What tests do I need? What can be done to relieve pain, fatigue, or other problems after treatment? How long will it take for me to recover and feel more like myself? Is there anything I can or should be doing to keep cancer from coming back?”

All of this – and MORE – are things to factor into recovery.

The answer to the ultimate question, “So when WILL she feel like she used to?” may not have a clear or solid answer. I suppose the best response might be, “e) All of the above”...

Resources: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/coping/life-after-treatment/page1/AllPages
Image: http://rlv.zcache.com/define_normal_button_magnet-p147413810323095621envtl_400.jpg