Vitamen C infusion

My brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in May.  He had metastatic disease to his spleen and omentum which precluded surgery.  He has had only 2 treatments of Gemzar and was on a clinical trial of Gleevic which he stopped.  Has anyone had a good response to Gemzar?  Has anyone tried Vitamen C therapy IV and can you direct us to where in NJ we can receive it?  His appetite is poor.  He is drugged on Dilaudid by mouth and losing weight.  This is all happening so fast.  What can we do?

 

On 7/27/2009 peaceprayer wrote:

My brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in May.  He had metastatic disease to his spleen and omentum which precluded surgery.  He has had only 2 treatments of Gemzar and was on a clinical trial of Gleevic which he stopped.  Has anyone had a good response to Gemzar?  Has anyone tried Vitamen C therapy IV and can you direct us to where in NJ we can receive it?  His appetite is poor.  He is drugged on Dilaudid by mouth and losing weight.  This is all happening so fast.  What can we do?

 

 

On 7/27/2009 peaceprayer wrote:

My brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in May.  He had metastatic disease to his spleen and omentum which precluded surgery.  He has had only 2 treatments of Gemzar and was on a clinical trial of Gleevic which he stopped.  Has anyone had a good response to Gemzar?  Has anyone tried Vitamen C therapy IV and can you direct us to where in NJ we can receive it?  His appetite is poor.  He is drugged on Dilaudid by mouth and losing weight.  This is all happening so fast.  What can we do?

I am so very sorry that you have to be on this journey. Gemzar is really a pallative chemo and if your brother is in good health and strong you may want to start with a more aggressive treatment such as GTX. . Many on the John Hopkins Pancreatic Discussion Board, ( which you should check out as they are wonderful and very knowledgable ) have done incredibly well on this combination. They can give you really good sound advice from first hand experience, including getting a second opinion from a high volume pancreatic cancer center such as John Hopkins or MD Anderson. When my dad was sick, I relied on their advice and it really made a difference.  Please be careful about the Vitimen C regime as our oncologist shared with us that recent studies showed that large amounts of Vit C diminished chemo effectiveness. Just make sure you clear all with your doc. I wish you well and will and your brother will be in my prayers.

 

Thank you for your information on Johns Hopkins.  It seems it took him forever to get started with chemo and Gemzar was all they offered.  I hope we did not make a wrong choice in cancer centers since pancreatic cancer is aggressive and time is of the essence.  He seems quite ill with a distended abdomen and confusion.  I hope he can withstand chemo now.

Luckily, Gemzar is pretty tolerable for most people, and doesn't have some of the really harsh side effects that other chemos have. My dad tolerated it well, just a bit of fatigue. They gave him anti-nausea meds before his treatments and they worked well. Actually once he started his treatments he began to feel much better, the pain was nearly gone and he was able to function pretty normally even taking some weekend trips. Do check out John Hopkins pancreatic cancer discussion board and I think many of the stories will give you hope to keep fighting along with your dad. It is a hard journey, I know only too well what you are going through. My prayers are with you both.

Hello peaceprayer........Please please research the following information before turning your back on proven alternative treatments. Time is of the essence here....... Vitamin C has been PROVEN to be an effective adjunct treatment with chemotherapy. I am appalled that some oncologists are still so uninformed. ................ The following quote is from the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health ................ "CONCLUSIONS: Since the 1970s, 280 peer-reviewed in vitro and in vivo studies, including 50 human studies involving 8,521 patients, 5,081 of whom were given nutrients, have consistently shown that non-prescription antioxidants and other nutrients do not interfere with therapeutic modalities for cancer. Furthermore, they enhance the killing of therapeutic modalities for cancer, decrease their side effects, and protect normal tissue. In 15 human studies, 3,738 patients who took non-prescription antioxidants and other nutrients actually had increased survival." ............ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17283738.......... _blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17283738.......... ............. The following links agree with the conclusion that vitamin C has been proven to be an effective cancer treatment...... CHEMO AND ANTIOXIDANTS http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17283738.......... _blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17283738.......... ..... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16484715?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=4&log$=relatedreviews&logdbfrom=pubmed ........... https://www.stmarys.org/body.cfm?xyzpdqabc=0&id=805&action=d .............. http://www.orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v04n12.shtml ................ For more information on some other effective natural treatments for pancreatic cancer please see the following:.......... Biography: Dr. Burt Berkson practices medicine in New Mexico and is an adjunct professor at New Mexico State University. He has worked as a researcher and professor at several institutions including the Max Planck Institute for Biological Science, the University of Illinois, the Autonomous Universities, Mexico and Rutgers University.............. In addition to his MD training (Autonomous Univ. CJ Mexico, Case Western Reserve affiliated hospitals, Cleveland), Dr. Berkson's education includes an earned Masters of Science degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois (fungal cell biology dissertation). .............. Dr. Berkson is an active scientific writer, researcher, and speaker. In addition, He is the CDC expert consultant on lipoic acid and hepatic poisoning and former FDA lipoic acid principal investigator................... He has authored, or co-authored 4 books; The Alpha-Lipoic Acid Breakthrough (Random House-Crown, 98), All About the B Vitamins (Avery, 98), Syndrome X (John Wiley, 2001, with co-authors) and A Users Guide to the B Vitamins (Basic Health Publications).............. http://ldn.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=links&action=displa .................. CURCUMIN http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16092118 ............ http://meeting.ascopubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/25/18_suppl ..............Blessings to your and your brother.......I hope you find something useful and hopeful in this message....... _____________________________________________________________

On 7/27/2009 peaceprayer wrote:

My brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in May.  He had metastatic disease to his spleen and omentum which precluded surgery.  He has had only 2 treatments of Gemzar and was on a clinical trial of Gleevic which he stopped.  Has anyone had a good response to Gemzar?  Has anyone tried Vitamen C therapy IV and can you direct us to where in NJ we can receive it?  His appetite is poor.  He is drugged on Dilaudid by mouth and losing weight.  This is all happening so fast.  What can we do?

I see some of the links appear to have been corrupted on transmission. If you send me a private message I will gladly copy and paste the information for you.......Here is the information from the first link.......... ____________________________________________________________ "Antioxidants and other nutrients do not interfere with chemotherapy or radiation therapy and can increase kill and increase survival, part 1. Simone CB 2nd, Simone NL, Simone V, Simone CB. Simone Protective Cancer Institute in Lawrenceville, NJ, USA. PURPOSE: Some in the oncology community contend that patients undergoing chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy should not use food supplement antioxidants and other nutrients. Oncologists at an influential oncology institution contended that antioxidants interfere with radiation and some chemotherapies because those modalities kill by generating free radicals that are neutralized by antioxidants, and that folic acid interferes with methotrexate. This is despite the common use of amifostine and dexrazoxane, 2 prescription antioxidants, during chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy. DESIGN: To assess all evidence concerning antioxidant and other nutrients used concomitantly with chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy, the MEDLINE and CANCERLIT databases were searched from 1965 to November 2003 using the words vitamins, antioxidants, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. Bibliographies of articles were searched. All studies reporting concomitant nutrient use with chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy (280 peer-reviewed articles including 62 in vitro and 218 in vivo) were indiscriminately included. RESULTS: Fifty human clinical randomized or observational trials have been conducted, involving 8,521 patients using beta-carotene; vitamins A, C, and E; selenium; cysteine; B vitamins; vitamin D3; vitamin K3; and glutathione as single agents or in combination. CONCLUSIONS: Since the 1970s, 280 peer-reviewed in vitro and in vivo studies, including 50 human studies involving 8,521 patients, 5,081 of whom were given nutrients, have consistently shown that non-prescription antioxidants and other nutrients do not interfere with therapeutic modalities for cancer. Furthermore, they enhance the killing of therapeutic modalities for cancer, decrease their side effects, and protect normal tissue. In 15 human studies, 3,738 patients who took non-prescription antioxidants and other nutrients actually had increased survival".... PMID: 17283738 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] ............... and from the second link ..........."Should patients undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy be prescribed antioxidants? Moss RW. Cancer Communications, Lemont, Pennsylvania 16851, USA. ralph@cancerdecisions.com In September 2005, CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians published a warning by Gabriella D'Andrea, MD, against the concurrent use of antioxidants with radiotherapy and chemotherapy. However, several deficiencies of the CA article soon became apparent, not least the selective omission of prominent studies that contradicted the author's conclusions. While acknowledging that only large-scale, randomized trials could provide a valid basis for therapeutic recommendations, the author sometimes relied on laboratory rather than clinical data to support her claim that harm resulted from the concurrent use of antioxidants and chemotherapy. She also sometimes extrapolated from chemoprevention studies rather than those on the concurrent use of antioxidants per se. The article overstated the degree to which the laboratory data diverged in regard to the safety and efficacy of antioxidant therapy: in fact, the preponderance of data suggests a synergistic or at least harmless effect with most high-dose dietary antioxidants and chemotherapy. The practical recommendations made in the article to avoid the general class of antioxidants during chemotherapy are inconsistent, in that if antioxidants were truly a threat to the efficacy of standard therapy, antioxidant-rich foods, especially fruits and vegetables, ought also be proscribed during treatment. Yet no such recommendation is made. Furthermore, the wide-scale use by both medical and radiation oncologists of synthetic antioxidants (eg, amifostine) to control the adverse effects of cytotoxic treatments is similarly overlooked. In sum, this CA article is incomplete: there is far more information available regarding antioxidant supplements as an appropriate adjunctive cancer therapy than is acknowledged. Patients would be well advised to seek the opinion of physicians who are adequately trained and experienced in the intersection of 2 complex fields, that is, chemotherapeutics and nutritional oncology. Physicians whose goal is comprehensive cancer therapy should refer their patients to qualified integrative practitioners who have such training and expertise to guide patients. A blanket rejection of the concurrent use of antioxidants with chemotherapy is not justified by the preponderance of evidence at this time and serves neither the scientific community nor cancer patients." PMID: 16484715 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Your brother may also benefit from a consultation with a Registered Dietitian as he will likely have many nutrition impact symptoms that should be addressed. Also the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network has many helpful resources.

can someone take the Vitamin C orally. My father is in another country and I don't think they will do I V vitamin C. If he can do that how much should he take?

Hello manohari..........Oral vitamin C will not be nearly as effective. There is one product though that I personally take every day along with vitamin K3 which is highly recommended by my medical/alternative doctor when his cancer patients go from weekly intravenous vitamin c treatments to maintenance treatments which are just every six or so weeks. This is vitamin C in a liposomal encapsulation form. Just to be clear.......I have no affiliation with this Company nor any commercial interest in it. I offer this information only because of my doctor's recommendations and my own personal success using alternative protocols...............You can find lots of research on it by doing a Google search on Lypo-Spheric Vitamin C. Also, here is a link to a very informative video presentation by Dr. Thomas Levy to the 35th Annual Cancer Convention......... You'll need to skip past the first video which pertains to another matter to get to the first of the four part video presentation........ ........http://www.tomlevymd.com/video/video.html ....... Best wishes for your father........Sheila ______________________________________________________________

On 7/28/2009 manohari wrote:

can someone take the Vitamin C orally. My father is in another country and I don't think they will do I V vitamin C. If he can do that how much should he take?