Visit our online cancer treatment forum today to explore conventional cancer treatment resources and share information, research and stories with other cancer patients. http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/cancer-treatment/conventional/1,0,129,123.htm Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT http://backend.userland.com/rss RSS.NET: http://www.rssdotnet.com/ We live in Massachussetts and want to have the chemo-sensitivity test done, but can't find  a Onc to do or use the results.  Our natopath says this is the best way to go. Husband has colon cancer and Irinotecan is not working anymore.   Please help Kerry http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,70624,0.htm kerdes Sun, 24 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT DOes anyone have any ideas as to how to pay for treatment when insurance won't pay for it? http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,70625,0.htm kerdes Sun, 24 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT My husband has colon cancer that went to his liver. He has had surgery to remove part of his colon, he is on chemotherapy to shrink the 2 tumors in his liver so he can have surgery to remove them from his liver. He is so sick with the chemo. He gets it every 2 weeks. Starts on a Wed and ends on a Fri. then he is sick for a least a week. We went to Boston for a consult and it was awful. He was told that he would live 1 year without treatment and 2 years with treatment. There was no cure. Is there anyone out there that has this? How are you doing? How long have you had it? I was hopeful till we went to Boston. His chemo is 5FU, Leucovorin, Oxiplatin. (Folfax 6). He cannot take Avastin yet because he is still slowly healing from his surgery. He takes Reglan and Ativan for his nausea which has helped with the vomiting, but he cannot eat. He continues to loose weight. After the Boston visit, he is thinking of stopping chemo because he is so sick with it. Does anyone who has this type of cancer have anything hopeful to tell me? http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,3920,0.htm Need2hope143 Tue, 03 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMT Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNor malTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Hello everyone, I am a student in a Masters program in the middle of a class on research methods but my true passion is oncology. I am looking into new methods of providing comfort to patients undergoing treatment and am looking for people to fill out a brief survey of 11 questions. This survey will be used to find out about desired relaxation methods for patients undergoing chemotherapy and how different activities can stimulate patients in different ways. Information will be used to try to figure out what methods will provide the most relaxation and give the patient the most positive experience. Information given will be kept confidential with no names, email addresses or ip addresses associated. Please send responses in by January 18th, 2013. Thank you for your participation in advance. Link to survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PetTherapy http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,69934,0.htm kpattonny Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT My dad is 78 and is to start 4000 mg of Xeloda daily for two weeks on, then one week off--8 cycles of this three week plan. Anyway, I thought 4000 mg was very high and higher than was Xeloda recommends. I'm going to try to contact Roche tomorrow, but wondered if anyone has thoughts on this. Thank you.--Ann E. http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,25664,0.htm ConcernedinKC Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT I am a final year student at the University of Strathclyde looking at Cisplatin & its side effects. If you or someone you know has had any experience with cisplatin I would appreciate if you could fill in the following survey.   http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PR7NKFD http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,69549,0.htm muni3 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT I am a 58 yr old male dxed 22 months ago with aaaaaaagbm rt temoral.  Have gone through 100% resection, radiation, Temodar, Clinical Trial XL184  and Avastin/CCNR.  Last week's MRI showed another recurrance and bt Dr. wants me to start on Carboplatin chemo.  Side affects look prettly intense.  Any advice from this group?  Thanks  http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,60784,0.htm jeffa Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT Awareness and knowledge are very important in the fight against cancer.  There is a lot of information regarding a new diagnosis, recurrence, understanding treatment options, and information about current research or clinical trials.  It is sometimes difficult to make sense of all the information provided.  One thing that maybe very helpful is getting a second opinion from a national expert.  There is a new on-line program that provides this service.  It allows you to submit your medical records to an expert for review and get a personalized second opinion about your cancer and treatment plan sent back to you and your treating physician.  You can find out more information about this at www.canceropinions.com . Cancer is such a complicated condition, and new research is being published all the time. A second opinion can provide you with very critical information about your cancer and treatment options.   http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,51800,0.htm Janetjrml Fri, 08 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMT I had 8 chemo /40 radiation treatments. After one year my neck cancer returned . They did a neck dissection and now they want to give a radiation treatment . What do I do? I was always told they should only do it once. The risk of damage is too great. Anyone have any advise. http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,62709,0.htm Jfrancisco Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT I am a 22 yr old fighting Ewing Sarcoma in pelvic region on my right side. I have already gone through 6 rounds of a horrible chemo regimen followed by 6 and half weeks radiation. I am currently going through high dose Ifosfamide chemotherapy for 7 days on a 21 day cycle. I am currently on day 10 of the cycle. By this time with the last drugs I was bald. Anyone have experience with high dose ifosfamide and have a time frame for hair loss? I hate to lose my hair again but it's not like I'm expecting a miracle and I'm gonna go through this leg of the trip with my hair. I have cancer, I'll be bald but I would like to be prepared for when its gonna fall out. Help please! http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,68849,0.htm SharonLiz Thu, 25 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://www.hulu.com/#!watch/279734 I have been on a whole food, plant based diet since May 2011. I have brain cancer, and my tumor had started growing a few weeks earlier. My doctor told me I would probably have to get on a different chemo if the tumor was still growing at my next MRI in September. After changing my diet, the MRI showed no change to the tumor and my brain cancer has been stable ever since. Two friends told me about the movie, Forks Over Knives, and I just watched it for the first time. It is something that EVERYONE needs to watch. It explains why everyone should be eating this way. If you want to get better, watch this and start eating this way as soon as possible. Not only is this a good diet for cancer patients, it is a good diet for everyone. It will help you lose weight, reverse heart disease and diabetes, lower cholesterol and blood pressure, allow you to get rid of all the meds that you are taking. The real meds are the whole, plant based food you eat. I also read a book by Joel Fuhrman, MD called Super Immunity. It is about the same diet. I liked the movie because you can get all of the info in less time than it takes to read the book. You can read part of the book on amazon.com . http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,68331,0.htm shariv Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT There are many cold cap therapies that those undergoing chemotherapy can use to prevent baldness. Some work better than others. Educate yourself because most doctors won't tell you about them. Most are not keeping up with these current technologies and don't care either way-cold cap use is not increasing their income. Search and you will find; Penguin cold caps, Elastogel caps, Digitana and Paxman. There is a whole topic on subject at the breastcancer.org website. http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,68293,0.htm Makingway Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT My husband was dx last June with stage4 lung cancer with lesions on the brain and in the bones.He had radiation on his brain and spine with some good readings ,. Has chemo every 3 weeks since september. Now he is going on the pill tarceva and I am worried will this give him more time. We are also moving back home which is 1500 miles away. How do we start again?    Is this pill tarceva any good what are the side effects. I am sure the docter told us but we don't remember,  Thanks for any information. http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,64232,0.htm jeriaya Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT I just started on Tarceva about 2 weeks ago. A few days ago I developed the rash. The blisters settled down after a few days, but now my skin is sooo dry and new wrinkles are everywhere. It looks like I have aged 10 years in 2 days. Just wondering if anyone else has had this kind of dryness with Tarceva. It also is quite itchy. Thanks! http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,66683,0.htm PeggyJ Thu, 14 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT MY TUMOR IS IN LUMBAR SPINE. DECIDING BETWEEN SURGERY AND CYBER KNIFE. ANY INFO ON CK RADIATION SIDE EFFECTS OR SURGICAL EFFECTS ARE APPRECIATED. THANK YOU. http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,68089,0.htm robespierre Fri, 07 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT 1. Water ionizer by juptier> By injesting this water with a ph 9-10 it will change the PH in you body enough so cancer can't live there. 2. Air ionizers that put out negative hydrogen ions that you can breath especially for lung cancer. 3. If you are doing chemotherapy>before each tratment rub on 90% dmso cream on you inner thighs,under arms,chest,stomach,and back> this is the cure that has totally cured 12-13 of my terminal friends in the last 2 years> big pharma does not want you to ever know about dmso. Why chemo kills you is because it also kills your good body cells and weakens you so much that it makes your body ph  even lower thus allowing thre cancer grow more rapidly>DMSO is a life saver 1. as soon as your body is injected with the chemo drug, dmso will attach itsellf to the drug and only allow it to kill the cancer cells,not the good body crells.Plus , here is the most amazing thing of all, it make the chemo drup 1000 times more potent. A good friend of mine was diagnosed with lung, bladder,intestinal,and stomach cancer> she did what I told her  using dmso and the cancer was gone from her body in 3 months http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,67987,0.htm LerogeeAngel Sun, 02 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT The Oncologist knows I am not having chemo and hope to live for another five years or so based on info provided.  I know I need to see an MD regularly and understand blood work.  I do not know why, however, the Oncologist wants to do regular scans.  Certainly pain meds are not prescribed based on the results of scans?  Lordy, I hope not! http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,67155,0.htm BernadetteH Sun, 15 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMT I was just denied a refill of my generic morphine pills because i used 90 in 9 days. I take 4gr every four hours, it is not a sedative, so i get no sleep, and end up taking it a complete 24 hour cycle. Now I have no paid medication for tomorrow, until i can get a prescription from the dr. at the cancer center. I shave stage 3 rectal cancer and have not started treatment yet. Is that too much morphine? http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,65905,0.htm momofeight Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT Anybody got any input experience on this. My mother has stage 4 renal cell carcinoma (kidney), spread to lung , lymph node, lesions in brain.  They are currently doing wbr. Anybody had in side effects? http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,63605,0.htm wareagle Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT anybody have this type of treatment http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,62993,0.htm Jfrancisco Sun, 20 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT I am looking for info from a person who has had PDT treatment.  Especially internal, not skin.  I have esophageal cancer ,4 years. I am very aware of the procedure, but, would like sometestimonials from actual recipients of the procedure. THANKS http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,62664,0.htm geraldoone Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT My auntie has stomach cancer with metastatis is liver and spleen.The doctor has tried a stomach removal,but the main tumour is located in the ,,mouth'' of stomach,so was impossible for him to do it. Now she cannot eat nor drink anylonger,because the tumor grew in meanwhile,so the food cannot enter the stomach,she is hospital and she can only get perfusion in her vein,to feed her so to say.The point is that ,I hear.they give her glucose in her vein,when I know glucose is one of the main food for the cancer cells. I would like to know if there is any other supplement which she can get in her veins,without glucose.Or ,if it's anything you might suggest in such situation? Any advice would be of great help! Thanks! http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,62432,0.htm rzv1976 Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT By Margot J. Fromer ASCO Post September 1, 2011, Volume 2, Issue 13 If the clinical trials endeavor in oncology is falling short of its goals and if targeted agents have not kept their promise, can a new approach to drug development provide a solution? Very possibly, said John Hohneker, MD, Chair of the Workshop Planning Committee for the conference, "Facilitating Collaborations to Develop Combination Investigational Cancer Therapies," held in Washington in mid-June and sponsored by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) National Cancer Policy Forum. He is also Senior Vice President and Global Head of Development, Integrated Hospital Care, Novartis. Dr. Hohneker said that the purpose of the workshop was to talk about the many barriers to this new approach to cancer treatment. "Combining investigational products early in their development is thought to be a promising strategy, especially when they target multiple pathways (or more than one step in a pathway), thus conferring greater benefit than therapy directed at a single target." Unfulfilled Promise Jane Perlmutter, PhD, founder of the Gemini Group, a consulting company, added, "The problem with the way cancer research is conducted is that the biology of the disease is so complicated that, although technology keeps advancing, personalized medicine is still mostly only a promise." Targeted agents for cancer haven't panned out to the extent hoped. Although a few might work sometimes or for a short time, the effects have not been significant or durable. And many are more toxic than expected. "Their regulation is confusing and/or interpreted too conservatively, and despite the great need, there is limited incentive for pharmaceutical companies to collaborate with each other," said Dr. Perlmutter. Advances in genomics and cell biology have paved the way for increasingly sophisticated targeted therapies, but cellular pathways contain redundancies that can be activated in response to inhibition of one or another pathway, thus promoting emergence of resistant cells and clinical relapse. The traditional path to drug development, even targeted therapy, has been one at a time. Sometimes a new drug is added to a standard regimen and then compared to the standard alone, but regardless of how or with what it is used, it has to work on its own. Cooperative Development This system is no longer completely viable in cancer and needs to be modernized. A new approach would provide the flexibility to evaluate combination regimens in a single development program that can screen all tumors for their pathway dependencies, resulting in efficacy based on screening results and experience with patterns of resistance. However, despite the potential benefits of such a scheme, uncertainty and risk abound. First, it is usually impossible to characterize the effects of the individual components. Second, combinations would probably yield considerably less information about safety and efficacy than would have been available had they been developed individually. Third, patients and physicians must not only be informed of more-than-usual risk, they must be willing to accept it. Fourth, there should be a compelling biologic rationale for their use and substantial reasons why the agents cannot be developed individually. The Science Is Complex James Doroshow, MD, Deputy Director for Clinical and Translational Research, NCI, discussed the scientific challenges facing development of combination targeted therapeutics: The mechanisms of action for a growing number of targeted agents that are available for trials are not completely understood. Lack of the right assays or imaging tools means inability to assess the target effect of many agents, and assays are not standardized. Preclinical models to evaluate efficacy, dosing schedule effects, biomarker utility, and toxicity are not available for combination therapies. Clinical trials methodology remains unclear with regard to numbers of patients, tumor biopsies, relevance of histologic homogeneity, and pharmacokinetic interactions. Intellectual property and regulatory matters are daunting. Dr. Doroshow also discussed mechanism of action (or mechanism of resistance) studies in early-phase trials. Problems include the evaluation of actual vs presumed sites of target engagement, evidence to support further development, demonstration of the relationship between dosing schedule and systemic exposure to target effects, and relevance of biomarkers. "In addition, we need to investigate the molecular effects, toxicology, and other safety signals of combination agents in surrogate tissues," said Dr. Doroshow. "This is a huge undertaking, and unfortunately it is not necessarily predictive of clinical benefit. That requires larger, later-stage trials." Michael T. Barrett, PhD, Associate Professor and Head of the Oncogenomics Laboratory, TGen, added that cancer is extremely genetically unstable, resulting in highly karyotypically and biologically individual malignancies. Thus, each patient's cancer could require its own specific therapy. Even if this were possible and practical, the treatment could ultimately be thwarted by emergence of a resistant variant genetic subline. Dr. Barrett also noted that each genome has unique sets of selected aberrations and mutations, of which multiple populations can be present at biopsy. These mutations can be asymmetric; they can progress and metastasize, and thus resist treatment. He warned that application of genomic tools to combination therapy has to be based on unbiased profiling of biopsies, as well as identification of therapeutic vulnerabilities in all patients. Kurt Bachman, PhD, Head of Translational Medicine and Biology, GlaxoSmithKline, added, "The challenge is to identify the tumor types most likely to respond, to find biomarkers that predict a response, and to define the relationship of the predictors to the biology of the inhibitors." Disclosure: Dr. Hohneker is employed by and owns stock in Novartis. Dr. Barrett has a current research contract with AstraZeneca. Dr. Bachman is employed by GlaxoSmithKline. Dr. Perlmutter reported no potential conflicts of interest. Dr. Doroshow reported no potential conflicts of interest. http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,62253,0.htm Gdpawel Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT My husband has been told that most probably his T2N2cM0 poorly differentiated squamous cell cel cancinoma of the left hypopharynx has metasticized to the lung.  The doctor plans to do nothing until the small spots become larger and then start him with the chemo Erbitux. He said that he had an estimated one year to live. He underwent 7 weeks of radiation and 2 rounds of chemo (too weak at the end to have the recommended 3rd) and initially was cancer free in February 2011. Can anyone respond about the quality of life on Erbitux and also whether you know anyone who has survived for longer than a year after metastisis to the lung.  (We will be getting a 2nd opinion, just have to figure out where.)  We live in Sacramento so if anyone has better ideas than UCSF or Stanford, please let me know.  We are obviously heartsick.  My husband is only 64 and has lived a very healthy lifestyle (not that having an unhealthy lifestyle means you "deserve" to get sick) but it is just so unexpected--all of it. http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,62179,0.htm Hearthealer Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:00:00 GMT I am interested in learning information concerning treatment of this disease both conventional and alternative. http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,62162,0.htm rwilbur Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 GMT