Gregory, I see your letters in all the cancer discussion sites and
you are very persuasive -- but no one else is writing in.
Chemosensitivity testing makes so much sense. Why do I see
so few real discussions about it? Where are the patients who
have tried it??
My mom's oncologist is recommending taxol/carboplatin, but
everything I find on the internet about advanced serous
endometrial cancer says that it has not been shown to be
responsive to standard treatments. Given this cancer's
advanced stage and lack of a clear protocol, I feel that it's
imperative that my mother's time and life not be wasted with
ineffective and/or harmful drugs. I don't want her to get
sucked up into some auto-pilot treatment plan, but she is in
another state and, while not totally passive, is not especially
inclined to question her doctor ("He seems like a good man...").
She and my father are open to my doing research to help them
with their decisions regarding treatment, but I feel I have to
have a lot of very persuasive information in order to prod them
to consider anything other than what the doctor says. So I'm
looking at CCDRT (cell culture drug resistance testing),
artemisinin, noscapine, low-dose naltrexone... It's difficult to
know where to put my energies. (Then there's my husband,
kids, job...)
One of the problems with CCDRT in my mom's case is that the
largest mass of cancerous tissue was removed a month ago
because she needed immediate surgery to remove a tumor that
was blocking her large intestine. At that time they also did a
hysterectomy and removed the omentum. We knew nothing
about CCDRT at the time of surgery. The remaining cancer is in
the form of lots of tiny tumors around her abdomen, so
obtaining enough sample tissue is problematic. The only
option then is tapping some of the cancerous fluid that we
know to be in her chest cavity.
I explain all this because, given the complicating factors, if I'm
going to press for my mom to have this procedure I want to
know that the resulting information will be highly useful!
Thank you for your efforts to help others sort through the
savage mess of modern cancer treatment...