ENCORE #69! – Man Cancer and the Orchiectomy

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 2011.

So this week I got the news that two good friends of mine have cancer. One has colon cancer and will be undergoing a colECTOMY (ecto = Greek for “to cut out”) during the Christmas season.

The other is twenty-some years younger than me. He was diagnosed with testicular cancer and had a radical orchiectomy after which…well, we don’t know because they are in the specific diagnosis part of his New Normal. He said he’d let me know because I pray well for biological specifics – I can see the parts of the body that are affected – cancer, breaks, dislocations, flu. I am a great prayer for healing of body parts as well as for restoring the heart and mind.

At any rate, some time ago, my wife asked “Why do so many people have breast cancer?” I marshaled statistics in this post: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2011/06/why-do-so-many-women-have-breast-cancer.html

The research led me to the statistics for other kinds of cancer – lung cancer, Liz’s mom died from this; blood cancer (leukemia), the son of close family friends; brain cancer, an old friend of mine died from this at 30; skin cancer, my sister, brother and sister-in-law have this; there are others with other cancers that I don’t care to enumerate at this time.

Testicular cancer has increased by 60% in the past 25 years. Why? Right now no one knows the answer, it just…has.

A student of mine, after we talked about why my wife’s hair all fell out during chemo. I talked about how the chemicals target fast-growing cancer cells – and kill the fast-growing hair cells “accidentally”. She then went on a rave about how we should make drugs that ONLY target cancer cells…and that got me to thinking.

Are all cancer cells created equal? Or are they egalitarian? Is testicular cancer the same as breast cancer? Brain cancer? Lung cancer? Skin cancer?

Questions – and today…no answers. Just more questions that I’m going to try to answer in the future…

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

BREAST CANCER RESEARCH RIGHT NOW! #56: “Hey! Get This Prescription Drug From Your Doctor!!!!!”

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://io9.gizmodo.com/5853356/sick-of-pharmaceutical-ads-heres-why-they-wont-go-away, https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/03/16/prescription-drug-costs-up-tv-ads/99203878/

Recently, I saw this commercial on TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFpSmeSYydM

It was advertising Neulasta – the drug my wife was given after her aggressive chemo treatments.

Most of you have noticed that in recent years, prescription drug ads have started popping up on TV. In fact, they are doing MORE than just “popping up”. According to the article I referenced above, there are “80 drug commercials every hour of every day on television.” Really? Now, I’m sure that includes Aleve, Bayer, and the host of others, like Prevagen (which supposedly increases memory retention in adults (and which is, sadly, seems to be aimed specifically at patients and family of Alzheimer’s patients). However, how many of us are getting tired of the Humira – which can, apparently, treat ulcerative colitis, plaque psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and Crohn’s Disease? I see THAT one constantly!

Also, the multiple alternatives to the diabetic injections my wife took of Lantis – Toujeo, touting how fabulous it is compared to the first one. There ARE other versions of insulin – 37 of them here (https://www.drugs.com/drug-class/insulin.html).

What the fart? Why would they do this? The answer is very simple: $$$MONEY$$$.

According to this article, which was written six years ago, “For every dollar spent on ads for drugs, over four dollars in retail sales are garnered. A May 2011 study showed that new drugs that feature direct-to-consumer advertising are prescribed nine times more than their new counterparts that lack consumer advertising.”

Currently: “In 2012, spending for pharmaceutical TV ads was the 12th-largest category. By last year [2016], drug ads were sixth…” As well: “In 2016, the top three ads based on total spending were Lyrica, with $313 million in spending; rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira at $303 million; and Eliquis, a treatment for a type of heart arrhythmia, at $186 million, according to Kantar.”

While the drug lobby argues that it’s “educating consumers”, I have no doubt that they are giggling behind their hands while reviewing their bank deposits on their laptops at night in their multi-million dollar mansions…I suspect that while Congress battles itself over health care programs, the Health Care Industry is doubled over in hysterical laughter at their cleverness in shifting the focus off of them and to the evils of being Republican or being Democrat.

“The cost of Lyrica…is about $400 for 60 capsules, for example. Critics say the ads encourage patients to ask their doctors for expensive, often marginal — and sometimes inappropriate — drugs that are fueling spiraling health care spending.”

We all know exactly what happened to drug companies who hiked the cost of the pen-delivered epinephrine (https://www.consumerreports.org/drug-prices/epipen-alternative-that-costs-just-10-dollars/), right?

Nothing. The story disappeared from the news as soon as the Democrats and Republicans started fighting about health care. And South Korea. And terrorism…strange, that, eh?

How about Martin Shkreli? He’s NOT being tried for hiking the price of an AIDS treatment drug from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill (paid for by insurance companies who then hiking insurance premiums…); he’s going to go to prison for defrauding his ALREADY fabulously wealthy investors. Not REAL people, but the glitzy-fritzy Rodeo Drive set. NOT for allowing those disgusting AIDS patients to die, but for making his investors have to dig out a bit more pocket change for that pearl-handled, battery-powered, mini-Maserati for the grammar school graduate…

Does this disgust you as much as it does me? I have no trouble with funding the research that CREATES new and effective drugs. I have all kinds of trouble with the Top-Of-The-Heap executives who profit while riding on the backs of normal people who have normal jobs in the companies that produce these drugs.

You know what I’m gonna do about it?

Continue to pay. Continue to watch TV. Pray that Jesus comes to take us Home soon…

Image: http://www.stock-free.org/images/make-money-dollar-usd-29022016-image-461.jpg

ENCORE #68! – The NEXT Five Years – Anastrazole!!! What’s It DO???

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 2011.

All right – the mastectomy is done (not OVER, there are still deep emotions attached to that surgery that will never “disappear”). The chemotherapy is done (same thing there: deep emotions and memories that will be carved into my mind forever). While it’s never completely gone, the gut-wrenching worry has passed.

What now?

For the next FIVE years, in addition to some cosmetic surgery, checkups and maintenance, there are more DRUGS. Specific to breast cancer is the one I’ll talk about today: anastrazole.

Chemically, this is called 2,2'-[5-(1H-1,2,4-triazol-1-ylmethyl)-1,3-phenylene]bis(2-methylpropanenitrile) – it’s the picture you see above.

But what’s it DO?

In a nutshell it slows down the production of estrogen in a human body (BTW – men make estrogen, too, just not as much as women do. Women make testosterone, just not as much as men do).

So?

Estrogen, which at puberty initiates the maturation of a woman, causes among other things, the increased growth of the cells in the breast. This estrogen comes from the ovaries and is a totally normal response to a person growing up. Estrogen levels in the blood increase during every menstrual cycle – which means it stimulates the growth of breast cells.

Estrogen doesn’t just stop affecting the woman after puberty. “…life-long exposure to estrogen…plays an important role in determining breast cancer risk…the number of menstrual cycles a woman has, and hence the length of exposure to estrogen during her lifetime, affects her risk for breast cancer.”

So every time a woman has her period, estrogen travels through the blood. The molecule of estrogen affects cells in the body – but only certain kinds of cells like the ones found in the breast and uterus. These cells have “keyholes” in their walls that are called estrogen receptors. The estrogen and the estrogen receptor hook together to make a single molecule that enters the nucleus of the cell. Once it locks on the cell’s DNA, it directs it to do many things. Among the things it tells the cell to do is GROW.

You know by now that cancer happens when cells grow totally out of control. So every time the breast cells get a message from the estrogen, they grow. Breast cancer is the out-of-control growth of breast cells stimulated by estrogen.

Anastrazole BLOCKS estrogen from giving its message to breast (and other) cells. On the website listed below, the author states: “…the medication is directed at preventing recurrence [of cancer] other than just in  breast tissue….The American Society of Clinical Oncologists stated recently: ‘To lengthen disease-free survival and lower risk for [cancer] recurrence in nearby tissues or distant tissues…’”

So in a single sentence – anastrazole blocks estrogen from giving its message to cells that like to take up estrogen and start growing wildly.

References: http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/factsheet/general/fs9.estrogen.cfm , http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Breast-Cancer/Why-Arimidex-Anastrozole-after-bilateral-mastectomy/show/1314813

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

GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT…Alzheimer’s #9: Tired of the Struggle

Dad’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s stayed hidden from everyone until I took over the medical administration of my parents in 2015. Once I found out, there was a deafening silence from most of the people I know even though virtually all of them would add, “My _____ had Alzheimer’s…” But there was little help, little beyond people sadly shaking heads. Or horror stories. Lots of those. Even the ones who knew about the disease seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Alzheimer’s Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this part of my blog…

I woke up this morning with a "missed call" notification from my dad. He called at 11:22 and didn’t leave a message. It’s early morning right now and I can’t call him just yet. If he was up late, then he’ll still be sound asleep. Waking him now would just confuse him more.

He’s been calling more lately, continuing his…delusion seems harsh, hallucination sounds like an LSD trip…illusion. I like the sound of that better. When I think of the word illusion, I think of “magicians” and “magic tricks”; sleight of hand in other words – making me think something happened but it didn’t in the way I ASSUME it did.

An Alzheimer’s group in Canada has this to say in defining this experience:

“Delusions are false beliefs. Even if you give evidence about something to the person with dementia, she will not change her belief. For example, a person with dementia may have a delusion in which she believes someone else is living in her house when she actually lives alone…”

“Hallucinations are incorrect perceptions of objects or events involving the senses. They seem real to the person experiencing them but cannot be verified by anyone else. Hallucinations are a false perception that can result in either positive or negative experiences.”

Lately, Dad has been having an increasing number of both. Things like the door closing to his apartment and him believing that Mom just left for work. He has these often and so far, they have always been about Mom. He even called one day from the “floor phone” to tell me that I wouldn’t believe it, but he had just been talking to Mom in his room and he wanted me to come over right away to see that he wasn’t crazy! That would be hallucination, something he sees, hears, tastes, touches, or smells.

He’s also convinced that he’s moving “back home” (he’s recently started asking the staff where he lives if he can have a box. I already confiscated one because I’m afraid he’ll trip over it. He got himself another one.) and that a bunch of guys stop by to pick him up regularly to go to work – at a place that does charitable stuff. Also there are times that he thinks Mom left him because she wanted a divorce. These are delusions – something he believes.

But I’m going to start lumping them together into an illusion.

But I was specifically wondering WHAT was going on in Dad’s brain. While there doesn’t seem to be any recent discoveries, I found this from 2014 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1064748113002832):

“Delusional thoughts are common among patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) and may be…linked to [the fact that they] cannot recall accurate information, which leads to inaccurate beliefs and [that they can’t] appreciate the illogic of beliefs…Delusions in AD are associated with dysfunction in specific frontal and temporal cortical regions. Delusions are…linked to memory deficits but not to insight.”

Of course, this doesn’t change anything. Dad’s illusions will continue to increase until his brain reaches a point where it can no longer function – Stage 7. Here’s a quick review the stages:

Stage 1: No memory problems are evident.

Stage 2: Minor memory problems but not distinguishable from normal age related memory loss.

Stage 3: Friends and family members begin to notice memory and cognitive problems like not being able to find the right word during conversations, forgetting new acquaintances, an frequently losing valuables.

Stage 4: Clear cut, classic symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease are apparent.

Stage 5: Need help with many day to day activities. Significant confusion, forgetting person information like phone number but still able to bathe and toilet independently. They also usually still know their family members and some detail about their personal histories, especially their childhood and youth.

[Dad is probably here-ish.]

Stage 6: Confusion or unawareness of environment and surroundings, behavior problems, assistance with activities of daily living, recognizes only friends and relatives, loss of history, incontinence, wandering.

Stages 7: Lose ability to respond to their environment or communicate, assistance with all activities of daily living is necessary, and many lose the ability to swallow [Dad has trouble with this already].

So, there you go. Living in his illusory world is hard for him – but it’s got to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to deal with.

Later…

Resource: http://www.alzheimer.ca/en/Living-with-dementia/Understanding-behaviour/Delusions-and-hallucinations

Image:  http://az616578.vo.msecnd.net/files/2016/06/25/6360242025150255191939281878_Alzheimer-disease-patients.jpg