ENCORE #13! – Chemotherapy: One Year Later and GODZILLA vs Breast Cancer

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 August, 2012.

Next Thursday, I’ll be going with my wife to the One Year Appointment. At the end of August, 2011, her chemo was done. Since then, it’s been a regimen of daily pills, bouts of lymphedema and struggles with balancing medications (cholesterol, synthroid, pseudephedrine, and so on).

HOWEVER, it’s also been a year filled with all kinds of joy: haircuts, camping and travelling (which stopped last summer), party times with friends without exhaustion setting in, play time with the grandkids and walks in the park, 25^th Wedding Anniversary date to a dinner theater, parting with our daughter, three times to fireworks, and plans for our foster daughter to go to New Zealand. A rich life, to be sure.

NOT that life before cancer wasn’t rich before, but now there’s a new appreciation of life. I don’t take traveling for granted any more. I certainly don’t take CAMPING for granted anymore: the roughness of the terrain, distance to the bathrooms and the bugs and darkness are tough enough for an able-bodied old man like me. They would have been very, very difficult for someone in the throes of chemotherapy! The fact that we could celebrate 25 years together after a hellish year following the initial diagnosis is spectacular!

The worry is much less as well – last summer, every time I went to work, I worried. It made for a pretty bleak time in some ways. I tried to keep my Scandinavian stoicism well-oiled and practiced, but I’m sure the anger, fear and bitterness leaked through (ask my students to see if I managed).

Not this summer! We’re even planning on going to the Great Minnesota Get-Together (for those of you reading this who are not from Minnesota, it’s also known as the Minnesota State Fair) after the One Year appointment to walk about and eat ourselves silly – and probably watch the fireworks show just before we go home (making it four fireworks displays we’ll have seen!)

Life is sweet – but let me add a caveat: life is NOT “the same” as it was before the breast cancer diagnosis of March 2011. Every moment, every event, every laugh, every fireworks explosion is a cause for celebration. Every hug from our grandkids, every tear-inducing laugh during cards, every walk to the park to throw the dog’s rope, every plan we make for the new cabinets and every trip to Target is cause for sighing in wonder at the things that make for life.

I am a blessed man; even with that, I extend my deepest sympathies to those who have lost their mate, their love, their mother, sister, colleague or partner to this scourge. We WILL defeat it. Next August I WILL ride in the 2013 Breast Cancer Ride  [I didn’t do this…sorry…] and I will find am still looking for a T-shirt that has Godzilla stomping out breast cancer!

 Close enough for government work! Next, the T-shirt!

http://www.supergraphictees.com/wp-content/uploads/new-godzilla-2014-pink.jpg

Image: http://voluume.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Encore-Sessions.jpg

BREAST CANCER RESEARCH RIGHT NOW! #33: The Not-So-Thrilling Connection Between Breast Cancer Research and Drug Company Profits...

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.bloomberg.com/topics/breast-cancer

I suppose I should have thought of this a long time ago, but I didn’t. So I’m going to toss this out to you.

Cancer research, specifically the search for drugs to TREAT breast cancer (as well as many other types) is a BUSINESS. The drug companies are doing their work not for Humanitarian reasons (though I have no doubt that some people in companies like Roche, Merck, Pfizer, Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., AstraZeneca, Biogen, Sanofi, Clovis Oncology Inc., Baxter Healthcare, and Puma Biotechnology Inc. are “in it” to help others) but to make a buck.

Cold, you say? Perhaps, but this quote might justify such an assessment: “Puma Biotechnology Inc. fell the most in almost a year after reporting results from a breast-cancer drug trial that disappointed investors.”

That monetary assessment of the lives lost, the hope spent, and the effort by the families who “invested” the end of the life of their loved one in the study doesn’t figure in this report.

Just that the investors in the company were...disappointed.

Which statement do you find colder, the one where I said that “drug companies…are ‘in it’ to make a buck” or the one where a business magazine reports that the “drug company…disappointed investors”?

Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful for the drug companies who developed Taxotere (Sanofi), Adriamycin (Ben Venue Laboratories), Cytoxan (Baxter Healthcare), Neulasta Amgen), and Anastrazole (AstraZeneca) – they saved the life of the person I love and have loved more than anyone else on Earth. But they save lives to make money – for their investors.

My point today? I don’t really have one, I guess. I’m just ruminating. I started off looking at breast cancer treatment breakthroughs for today from a different angle. I wanted to see if the business world had a different POV than the science or medical fields. The result was that I was confronted by the hard fact that NONE of these endeavors are pursued out of a driving sense of philanthropy. I knew that, surely. It just never hit me like it did today.

To end on a positive note, I’ll just briefly preview the research I just found with the title of the next Breast Cancer Research Right Now! post: COFFEE PROTECTS AGAINST BREAST CANCER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeehaw!!!!!!! Look Out Caribou, here were come!
(http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150421084531.htm)

Resources: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-14/puma-plummets-as-breast-cancer-drug-trial-results-seen-as-murky

Image: http://www.actos-cancer-lawyer.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Drug-Money.jpg

EDITING MY FIRST NOVEL ALL WEEK -- JUST SUBMITTED IT THIS MORNING!

I WILL BE BACK NEXT SATURDAY, MAY 24, 2015!


Image: http://randomwritingrants.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Screenshot-2014-06-25-15.06.17.png

GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT #14…Aches & Pains or ACHES & PAINS!!!!! ?

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…

I’ll be 58 in a few days and like many folks my age, (besides getting the quarterly invitation to join letter from AARP), I have aches & pains. Sore back, stiff joints, increased fatigue after doing “regular stuff”, pre-diabetic blood sugars, failing eyesight, fading hearing, all the kinds of things we associate with aging.

My wife experiences some of the same things – but there’s a twist now.

When talking about a stiffness here or swelling there, the breast cancer survivor has the added, “elephant in the room” – is the ache or pain caused by breast cancer resurgence or the meds that they have been taking for years?

In other words, are these simple aches & pains, or are they symptoms of the cancer or the anti-cancer drugs, and urge a visit to the cancer clinic rather than the medicine cabinet for some Tylenol? What I think of as ACHES & PAINS!!!!

It seems that there is a certain amount of fatigue that accompanies a woman after successful breast cancer treatment, “Fatigue is a normal response to breast cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation therapy, but one-third or more of breast cancer survivors report continued debilitating fatigue long after treatment has ended.”

While the first resource listed below was written before 2011, current research seems to be uncovering even more startling information!

“Pat Christian beat stage 3 breast cancer. But 5 years later, she's still fighting fatigue.  She says, ‘Your body is not the same.  After you go through chemo or radiation, your body is not the same.’ That's why the 57-year old non-profit founder volunteered for a study at Emory Medical School, to see if massage therapy can help breast cancer survivors cope with fatigue.  She was skeptical.  Christian says, ‘When they told me about the treatment, I was, like, right!  I just really didn't think it was going to make a big difference…’”

The fact is that no one told my wife about cancer-fatigue. I’d never heard of it, either.

When we went to a B&B several years ago, part of the package offered a massage session. We took them up on it – my wife had the bath salt and massage, I had the hot rock massage. It WAS fantastic!

But NOW, maybe we need to do it again. We know all about aches & pains and now it appears that ACHES & PAINS!!!! are real. And apparently, those ACHES & PAINS!!!!, clinically identified as cancer-fatigue have a real cause – and a real solution.

We’ll let you know what happens!

Resource: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/cncrfatigue.htm, http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/story/28813519/can-massage-help-breast-cancer-fatigue-emory-researchers-look-for-answers, http://www.breastcancer.org/treatment/side_effects/fatigue

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

ENCORE #11! – “Why are so many people dying of cancer?”

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 September of 2012…

Not the first person who ever asked this; not the first time we’ve ever asked it – http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2011/06/why-do-so-many-women-have-breast-cancer.html is there an ANSWER?

Anecdotally, I’ve heard that the reason so many people are dying of cancer is because we simply live longer. The average life expectancy of all Humans on Earth is 67.2 years.

So? That seems like a really short time! How can that be? What did it USED to be? Hmmm…according to Wikipedia (always my initial go-to source), the average lifespan in Greece, Rome, and Inca/Mayan times was 28; in the Caliphates of northern Africa and the Middle East it was 35. That was what, like 2500 years ago? Right.

So it’s pretty much doubled.

I’ve heard that the reason we get cancer now is that even though cancer was PRESENT then, it didn’t have enough time to kill the person it was growing in. People died of old age before symptoms of various cancers like unintentional weight loss, fever, being excessively tired, and changes to the skin appeared. As well, coughing, difficult or painful swallowing, changes in bowel habits, easily felt masses, coughing up blood, or blood in the bowels, the bladder, or the uterus, localized pain or even painless swelling, and possibly a buildup of fluid in the chest or abdomen could be attributed to lots of things in the ancient world, up to and including the Black Death!

While Hippocrates observed tumors of various types (including breast cancer) in ancient times when life expectancy was only 28 years; and the Egyptians were actually removing tumors 2000 years before the birth of Christ, no one had a real handle on cancer until scientists and doctors started to pool their knowledge in the 1700s and 1800s. By then, life expectancy had increased to about 36 years.

“….cancer…[has] always been with us. People have been getting cancer from the earliest days of their existence (whenever that might be). Heck, most animals get cancer. Even some plants get cancer-like growths...the potential for cancer is in each and every living creature…we also know quite convincingly, and all nonsensical prehistoric arguments aside, that the incidence of cancer has increased dramatically over the last century.” (Written by a man who has no credentials except that he likes to write disparagingly…)

“Incidence: In 2000-2004, across Australia, there were 3,083 cancers diagnosed among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The most common cancers diagnosed among Indigenous males in this period were of the lung, bronchus and trachea (19% of all male cancer reported), prostate cancer (10%), colorectal cancer (10%), cancer of unknown primary site (6%), and lymphomas (5%). The most common cancers diagnosed among Indigenous females were breast cancer (25% of all female cancer cases reported), cancer of the lung, bronchus and trachea (12%), colorectal cancer (9%), cancer of the cervix (7%) and cancer of unknown primary site (6%). In the same period, more new cases of cancer were reported among Indigenous females (1,598) than Indigenous males (1,485) compared with the non-Indigenous population.” (http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/chronic-conditions/cancer/reviews/our-review)

So, what about cancer among non-aboriginal Australians? Go to the site above and scroll down to the chart. If Aboriginal Australians, who eat pretty much the way they always have (this isn’t just “city aboriginals” – this is ALL of them), have cancer – some types being more common among THEM than non-indigenous Australians. Statistics speak more loudly than someone who uses the phrase “nonsensical prehistoric arguments”.

Conclusions? None really except to say that cancer has been with us for a long, long time. There are some cancers that were more common then, some are more common now. “Why are so many people dying of cancer?” So many is a relative term. And the fact is that it’s not important, really. Even mister “nonsensical” and the Australian government will agree that cancers of ALL TYPES needs to be destroyed.

Resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cancer, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy, http://www.jonbarron.org/alternative-cancer/historic-growth-rates-of-cancer

Image: http://voluume.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Encore-Sessions.jpg

BREAST CANCER RESEARCH RIGHT NOW! #32: A Vaccine Against Breast Cancer!?!?!?!?!?!?!

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.crownbio.com/knockout-jab-breast-cancer/

NOT TODAY OR TOMORROW!!!!!

But maybe someday in the not-too-distant-future!

One of the things that sometimes bugs me about science fiction that’s supposed to be set in the distant future, is when they pull a stunt with the sole intent of making the “futuristic story” relevant to today. I’m reading a novel right now in which soldiers swear with the “f-word”. I can’t help think, “Oh, come on! You don’t REALLY think cuss words are going to stay exactly the same and have the same shock value five hundred or a thousand years in the future, do you?”

Another one, this time relevant to breast cancer, is when the President of the Twelve Colonies on the re-imagined BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is diagnosed with breast cancer. “At her doctor's appointment, Roslin is told that she has breast cancer and a year to live.”

Far be it from me to second-guess a writer and argue for dramatic impact, but this society has TWELVE separate worlds it governs; it has the capability to build (from scratch) TWELVE massive, monstrous, huge star ships capable of traveling at trans-light speeds – but not a single person ever thought to apply technology to breast cancer research?

Thanks be to God we live in this society! While the BC vaccine is by no means “just around the corner”, there is excellent evidence from a few small studies that it may be something that young adults may experience as a matter of course. There’s a glimmer of hope of creating a vaccine against breast cancer!

Something called “Mammaglobin-A (MAM-A) is overexpressed in 40% to 80% of primary breast cancers.” Because it is so common in breast cancers, researchers can use it as a marker – like a blinking light on top of a water tower! – and design T-cells (also known as white blood cells – the kind that fight disease and infection in Humans) that will specifically attack and eat the cancer cells. “This makes MAM-A a great target for a new cancer therapy as it could hopefully be used for the vast majority of patients with early stage and metastatic disease, where the protein is also found to be overexpressed. The vaccine works by priming white blood cells to target and destroy other cells presenting MAM-A, and the vaccination study was the first of this type against this target.”

The time is not ripe for celebration – the time IS right to get yourself involved with Relay For Life, the Susan B. Kommen Race For The Cure, or to write your checks to your local breast cancer – ANY cancer research – organizations! I and my wife are walking in the Relay For Life sponsored by the high school I work at and our sister high school across the district. (I don’t have a sponsor page up yet, but it WILL be here! http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RFLCY15MW?pg=entry&fr_id=66722)

Resources: http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/20/23/5964.abstract, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Roslin, http://www.crownbio.com/knockout-jab-breast-cancer/

Image: http://snippetstudios.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/galactica.jpg

ENCORE #10! – 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…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 October of 2012…

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, brother-in-law [4/11/15], sister-in-law, brother and dad [and I... 4/11/15] 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-medicine

works.com/pdfs/cancercmbeinfieldkorngold.pdf, https://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih1/cancer/guide/understanding2.htm

Image: http://voluume.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Encore-Sessions.jpg