GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT #24 “…help finish the fight against cancer once and for all!”

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…

Two years ago, my wife and I walked for a short time in my school’s Relay For Life event (http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2014/05/guys-gotta-talk-about-2the-relay-for_31.html). We’re doing it again this year.

Unfortunately, my wife’s best friend and her husband are also doing it with us this year…as a breast cancer survivor. Yeah, once again, I get to say what I said here: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2016/03/guys-gotta-talk-about-23f-cancer.html

At any rate, I won’t only be walking, I’m gonna see if I can get a few donations by agreeing to put the name of a person in my current WIP (for those of you who aren’t up on the writerly lingo, that stands for Work In Progress!) The book itself doesn’t have anything to do with breast cancer or any other kind of cancer for that matter. I’ll just add the auction winner’s name into the book as a minor character. It could be fun (though some people may not think being in an electronic book is much fun – it’s not exactly like being in a paper book that you can put on a shelf somewhere and forget but take down whenever you want to show off a bit! But it’s something I can do that might tickle someone’s fancy and it’s a unique skill in the overall view of the planetary population.

So, if you’d like to sign up to support the Robbinsdale RFL (I guess I’ll also be speaking briefly as a former caregiver, too!), then there’s a link below.

Truth? It feels good to be doing something this year to support the research against cancer. I love the way they phrase it on the website below: “…help finish the fight against cancer once and for all!”  

SIGN UP TO SUPPORT US!: http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RFLCY16MW?pg=entry&fr_id=71483

Image: http://wrex.images.worldnow.com/images/23784252_SA.jpg

ENCORE #35! – The Death of Cancer Cells…

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…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The following entry appeared in February of 2013…

My wife had a checkup this week. No one seemed to be looking for tumors, no one suggested CAT or PET or bone scans, no one felt for lumps...they took some blood and told her they’d get back to her...

She got the call and the doctor said that she was vitamin D deficient and they were prescribing some MEGA vitamin D pills. NOT to combat bone loss, not against depression, not for any of the reasons that seemed to ME to be logical. The vitamin D pills were for MUSCLE PAIN.

We went out to do a bit of shopping and picked up the prescription and when we got home, she took the pill (with a few slices of a medium, traditional crust, mushroom and black olive (plus “go light with the pepperoni”)), and extra cheese pizza). After watching MASH and the first half of CHESS, she stood up, walked into the dining room and said, “Could a pill work after taking it two hours ago – because my legs don’t hurt anymore.”

I blinked in surprise and said, “I...well...I don’t THINK so.”

Since that day, her body pain is gone. She started taking capsaicin several weeks ago and that helped with pain as well.

This got us started on a nighttime conversation. By the time we were ready for bed, she said, “No one seems to be worried about me getting cancer again.”

“I know. It’s weird,” said I.

“What if...” she paused. Then she continued in a softer voice, “What if it’s gone? What if I don’t have to worry about a recurrence anymore? No one else seems worried. So, maybe I don’t have to worry.”

I didn’t know what to say. Her cancer doctor had prescribed the most aggressive regimen he knew. She had a double mastectomy. What more could she have done? Maybe the horror was over. Maybe FOREVER.

What if?

The concept is STUNNING and I’m pretty sure I’m not done thinking about it…or writing about it!

Image: https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5527/10893068965_1d328e8f71_b.jpg

BREAST CANCER RESEARCH RIGHT NOW! #44: Approaching Targeted Treatments!

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 maybe even podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and share them with you. Today: https://vimeo.com/155722401 (video); http://houstonmethodist.org/1285_houstonmethodist/1315_newsroom/1316_newsroom_newsandevents/newsdetail/?key=%7b03d8d7ae27034b5cb632a6f3fb2c700b%7d (article); http://cdmrp.army.mil/bcrp/default.shtml (site where I discovered this)

The thing most associated with those who suffer from the plethora of cancers that attack humans, is a person with a bald head – women and children in particular.

Nothing stirs us like an image of a child who has no hair, because we know perfectly well that they are sick. Nothing so makes the heart of a man quail as a bald woman. Nothing drives home the truth of our mortality as the sight of a woman we love who has lost all of her hair...

Those who have gone through radiation treatment or chemotherapy know that the death of hair follicles is one the side effects of the treatment. It happens because doctors and researchers are unable to precisely target treatments that ONLY destroy cancer cells: “Due to the body’s own defense mechanisms, most cancer drugs are absorbed into healthy tissue causing negative side effects, and only a fraction of the administered drug actually reaches the tumor, making it less effective, said Mauro Ferrari, PhD, president and CEO of the Houston Methodist Research Institute.”

Research Right Now! has been pushing for methods of introducing anti-cancer agents directly to the cancer cells.

Nanoparticles are one way researchers are doing this.

What’s a nanoparticle? Literally, it’s a particle that is one billionth the size of a meter.

In this line of research, scientists literally encase a cancer drug like tamoxifen (I’ve written about it here: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2015/03/encore-8-take-tamoxifen-for-ten-years.html) in FAT. The particle can then be covered with a substance that will only attach to a cell that has a particular “cancer taste” on it. Then it delivers its death package and gets absorbed into the body.

Sounds simple, right?

It ain’t!

“The Houston Methodist team used doxorubicin [which] has adverse side effects to the heart and is not an effective treatment against metastatic disease…each component has a specific and essential role in the drug delivery process… [a] nanoporous silicon material…[plus] a polymer made up of multiple strands that contain doxorubicin [are taken] inside the tumor, the silicon material degrades, releasing the strands…these strands curl-up to form nanoparticles that are taken up by the cancer cells…the acidic pH close to the nucleus causes the drug to be released from the nanoparticles. Inside the nucleus…”

There is plenty of room for problems here, but the research grant they have has led to the point where “Houston Methodist…plans to fast-track the research to obtain FDA-approval and begin safety and efficacy studies in humans in 2017.”

We haven’t reached the point of delivering an anti-cancer vaccine (which GUY’S GOTTA TALK will focus on next time – though I’ll leave you with a teaser: “I Am Legend – the Movie”) – but we are moving toward a day where maybe my daughter and surely my granddaughter, will no longer have to dread  a cancer diagnosis.

Image: https://pixabay.com/static/uploads/photo/2014/10/17/06/24/mother-491952_960_720.jpg

ENCORE #34! – Chemo Killed Colds…and Other Weird Thoughts

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…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The following entry appeared in December of 2012…

My wife’s down with a coughing, miserable, fever-full something-or-other, most likely the most recent form of the noravirus...

Working in an elementary school, she’s usually immune to whatever plague is making its way through the general population. But when something smacks into the school and it’s new, and the kids are staying home in droves…well, the staff usually gets it and it wipes them out, too.

So she’s down for the last day before Christmas Vacation.

It wasn’t like that during chemo. We’ve talked about it before. All of the normal illnesses seemed to give way in front of the onslaught of Taxotere (http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2011/10/whats-it-do.html), Adriamycin (http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2011/10/adriamycin-whats-it-do.html), and Cytoxan (http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2011/11/cytoxan-whats-it-do.html), grouped with Neulasta (http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2011/11/neulasta-whats-it-do.html).

But was that truth or only appearance?

Appearance, I guess (http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/preventinfections/patients.htm); though the FACT was that my wife got sick with garden-variety colds and infections less often while she was taking chemo and a reasonable conclusion would be that her blood would be highly toxic to anything else that got into her.

BUT…what about neulasta (the brand name of a compound called PEG-filgrastim)? If white blood cells fight off disease and neulasta BOOSTS the white blood cell count…

I did a lengthy search, but can find virtually NOTHING regarding people who have taken neulasta without having some sort of disease. While one of the side effects of using neulasta is a decrease in mineral bone density, there don’t seem to be any other consistent and wide-spread reactions (of course, there are isolated incidences of nausea, etc. One person even reacted by getting horrible pocks of dead and dying flesh (called Sweets Syndrome)).

It would be interesting to find out if there have been instances of people who took neulasta without having any sort of illness. Would they have a super-immune system? Would they sail through life without illness? Don’t know. The intent of neulasta injections coupled with chemotherapy is to boost the immune system’s response in order to ward of infections during the treatment. That’s what it did for my wife.

The question I have is that if it did that during chemotherapy when the immune system was weak; what would it do for a HEALTHY immune system?

Any anecdotes and web connections would be appreciated!

Image: https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5527/10893068965_1d328e8f71_b.jpg