Living With Cancer

I’m Dreaming Of A White (Blood Cell) Christmas
Number of days since last chemo: 22
Number of days until incoming chemo: 8 (cell counts permitting)
Number of chemo treatments left: still 2
Mood: relieved

Well, it turns discover that the decision about whether or not to delay my chemo after existence ill was made for me in the end. Having been quite hopeful that the GCSF injections I had after my last treatment, nonnegative a slightly lowered dose of Carboplatin, would’ve alert up my neutrophils and white cells, I ended up getting a sound call at 6pm on Tuesday from digit of the nurses at the Chemo Suite to feature that they were still too low. My neutrophils were 1.2 when they requirement to be 1.5 for chemo to go ahead. So, I had to go to the Chemo Suite yesterday morning for more murder tests just to analyse if anything had denaturized overnight, and it turns discover that it had, but in the criminal direction! Instead of increasing, they had actually fallen to 1.1, so after speaking to my oncologist the woman addicted that I would have to delay until 28th December.

I was actually quite relieved by that point, because just getting to the hospital had made me feel exhausted and weak. I knew deep down that I wasn’t rattling primed for this treatment so soon after existence ill, but preposterously I felt like I ought to go aweigh anyway. I just didn’t want anyone to think I was existence a wimp by agreeing so easily to a delay. (I know, I know, it’s stupid to think that, but I can’t help the disturbed way in which my mentality works!) Anyway, my embody has made the decision over my head, so there’s null I crapper do about it even if I wanted to. I think my oncologist was quite surprised I was even attempting to have chemo in the first place!

So, at least today I know that I’ve got a chemo-free Christmastime which is rattling nice. I’m thinking to make the most of it by eating lots, and maybe even having a glass or 2 of mulled wine if my stomach is up to it! I’ve got to go backwards to hospital on the 27th for murder tests, and then every existence well I’ll be having chemo in just over a week. Having it so near to New Year’s Eve means it’s going to be kinda a low-key start to 2008, but I’m action my celebrations for erst every this is over…

Em

Post Chemo Hair Loss (and Regrowth)
Number of months since finishing chemo: 5
Amount of hair growing back: enough to requirement it cut
Amount of hair falling out: enough to wonder what on earth is going on?!

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Tags: endocrine cancer, cancer drugs, cancer therapy, living with cancer, wound cancer

News from the cancer side, January 9
News from the joint lateral Growing insufficiency of gastroenterologists to change display power for #2 cancer killer Last January 7, 2009, data from researched conducted by the Lewin Group as licenced by medical technology consort Olympus, were presented in a telenews event. The study inform entitled “The Impact of Improved Colorectal Cancer Screening Rates on Adequacy of […]

News from the joint side

Growing insufficiency of gastroenterologists to change display power for #2 cancer killer
Last January 7, 2009, data from researched conducted by the Lewin Group as licenced by medical technology consort Olympus, were presented in a telenews event. The study inform entitled “The Impact of Improved Colorectal Cancer Screening Rates on Adequacy of Future Supply of Gastroenterologists that the US” concludes that the US is facing a insufficiency of gastroenterologists (GIs). This insufficiency crapper have some earnest consequences in the display of colorectal cancer. News event speakers were: F. Mark Gumz, President and CEO, Olimbos Corporation of the Americas; Tim Dall, vice chair and lead study author, The Lewin Group; parliamentarian Reinhardt, Chief of Strategy, Medical and Surgical Business, Olimbos America; and Dr. Apostle Okolo, Chief of Endoscopy, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The inform is acquirable at http://www.olympusamerica.com/crcadvocacy/.

News from the laboratory

Rat embryonic stem cells created  

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Tags: drugs for cancer, cancer, cancer drugs, living with cancer, cancer therapy

Silly, totally un-PC gag, but it made me laugh
The sound rings and the lady of the house answers.

“Hello.”

“Mrs. Ward, please.”

“Speaking”

“Mrs. Ward, this is Doctor Jones at the Medical Testing Laboratory. When your doctor dispatched your husband’s biopsy to the lab yesterday, a biopsy from added Mr. Ward arrived as well, and we’re today uncertain which digit is your husband’s. Frankly the results are either intense or terrible.”

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Ward asks nervously.

“Well, digit of the specimens tested constructive for Alzheimer’s,and the another digit tested constructive for AIDS. We can’t tell which specimen is your husband’s.”

“That’s dreadful! Can’t you do the test again?” questioned Mrs. Ward.

“Normally we can, but Medicare will exclusive clear for these expensive tests digit time.”

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Tags: cancer drugs, cancer, cancer doctor, living with cancer, mentality cancer

Precancerous Lesions Raise Cervical Cancer Risk
Study finding may lead to changes in recommendations for Pap tests

(HealthDay News) — Women who have had modern precancerous lesions of the opening are still at venture for invasive cancers up to 25 eld later, Swedish researchers report.

Currently, the dweller Cancer Society recommends that women who have had precancerous lesions titled nonindulgent dysplasia/carcinoma in situ (CIS) move getting Pap tests for 10 eld after treatment. But, supported on this study, these guidelines may requirement to be changed, said Debbie Saslow, the society’s director of boob and gynecologic cancer, who was not involved with the research.

Saslow added, however, that even though these women move to be at venture for developing cervical or vaginal cancer, the venture is low. “Women who have been treated for modern precancer do requirement to rest vigilant,” she said.

“This essay is going in my file for when we update our guidelines in the incoming two years,” Saslow added. “We will wager if we want to stick with 10 eld or go to a much wider interval.”

The study was led by Dr. Bjorn Strander, a grownup consultant with the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Sahlgren’s Academy at the University of Gothenburg. The researchers composed data on 132,493 women who had a diagnosis of nonindulgent dysplasia/CIS between 1958 and 2002. The statistics came from the National Swedish Cancer Register.

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Tags: endocrine cancer, drugs for cancer, cancer therapy, cancer, living with cancer

Molecule Linked To Muscle Maturation, Muscle Cancer
Cancer researchers have discovered that a molecule implicated in leukemia is also important in hooligan bushel and rhabdomyosarcoma, a cancer caused proliferating immature hooligan cells. The study shows that immature hooligan cells order the molecule miR-29 to mature, and that the molecule is nearly missing in rhabdosarcoma cells. The findings should give a meliorate understanding of hooligan bushel and development, and of rhabdomyosarcoma, and could lead to newborn treatments for hooligan diseases.

Tags: endocrine cancer, lung cancer, mentality cancer, drugs for cancer, living with cancer

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Tags: wound cancer, cancer doctor, lung cancer, living with cancer, drugs for cancer

The Speed of Change
What it takes to modify the direction of your life: just digit sound call

2 days past I wrote an entry about my fears over the MRI construe I was due to have at the end of the month, and about what impact the possibleness results could have on my life. But how apace things crapper change! Yesterday, I had a sound call from the hospital and was told that they’re not going to construe me before my designation with my oncologist on 25th Apr after all. Instead I just have to move my CA125 murder test (the accelerator in your murder that is sometimes produced by ovarian cancer cells and therefore crapper be an indicator of ovarian cancer) a week before the designation to analyse that my levels are still within the nomal range, as they have been for the last 6 months. Then when I wager my oncologist I’ll find discover those results, and discuss continuation the construe with him. So it’s not exactly going to display the grand partitioning I was hoping for!

It’s every just a rank modify to what I thought was going to happen. Instead of going into the designation in 4 weeks time to find discover digit way or added whether these illusive spots on my viscus are cancer or not, I’m today just going to be to discussing it still further. I don’t mind that in some ways, I mean I understand that even if it is cancer then waiting 2 months to re-scan wouldn’t rattling be enough time for it exhibit much change, so continuation it so soon might not be very helpful in providing an answer. I just wish that I’d known that from the start because then I wouldn’t have spent the last 5 weeks bedevilment about it! I feel slightly more easygoing today I know I’m not going into the designation with my oncologist to potentially hear something awful, but at the aforementioned time I today have the individual of existence in this limbo status for even longer.

It is definitely digit of the most difficult aspects of existence ill, and digit of the hardest to try to describe, just waiting. The whole time you know what you’re facing, even if it’s something rattling hard like having to have chemotherapy, then you crapper focus on it and mentally educate yourself for it. When you don’t know what’s reaching though you are in a kind of no man’s land - I don’t want to adopt it’s going to be the poorest housing senario because if it isn’t then I’ve stressed myself discover and wasted 2 months bedevilment over nothing. However, if I conceive it’s every going to be fine I could be environment myself up to fall even harder if it turns discover not to be. So instead I have to try and walk the fine line between the two: accepting that it could be intense programme but not allowing myself to be so preoccupied with the idea that I stop living my life right in the meantime. To be having to spend 2 months in this limbo was intense enough, but today it seems it’s going to go on even longer.

So, with just digit sound call what I have been trying to educate myself for over the last 5 weeks has been completely turned on its head. It seems there are no answers up aweigh for me after all, just a lot more waiting.

Em

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Tags: endocrine cancer, wound cancer, mentality cancer, living with cancer, cancer doctor

‘Relocation’ Plan Of Metastatic Cancer Cells Uncovered
Few things are as tiresome as house hunting and moving. Unfortunately, metastatic cancer cells have the change impact down pat. Tripping nimbly from digit abode to another, these migrating cancer cells ofttimes establish far more deadly than the example tumor. Although little has been known about how these rapscallion cells opt where to locate down roots, researchers have today learned just how wicked they are.

Molecular Imaging Enables Earlier, Individualized Treatment Of Thyroid Cancer
In a study to determine the diagnostic value of molecular imaging in nodal staging of patients with thyroid cancer, researchers were able for the first time to accurately distinguish between cancerous cells in regional lymph nodes and connatural matter thyroid tissue directly after surgery.

High Insulin Levels Raise Risk Of Breast Cancer In Postmenopausal Women
Higher-than-normal levels of insulin locate postmenopausal women at increased venture of boob cancer, researchers report.

Tags: drugs for cancer, endocrine cancer, boob cancer, cancer therapy, cancer

Let The Sun Shine In - But How Much?
Mom ever told us we necessary to spend time in the sun, but watching sunscreen commercials makes us wonder if we should venture beyond the front door unless the moon is shining.  Do we rattling requirement sunshine?  And if so, do we dare step right for 10 minutes without sunscreen?

  According to the National Cancer Institute, up to 50% of those living in the US are at high risk for vitamin D deficiency.  Vitamin D deficiency has been linked with individual cancers as well as conditions such as osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease.  Over the time year, studies have been publicised demonstrating a momentous change in the incidence of boob cancer, lung cancer, and colorectal cancer in those receiving the equivalent of 1000 IU’s of vitamin D daily.  For those who have been diagnosed with cancer, increased survival geographically going from northerly to south has been correlated with sun exposure, and hence vitamin D.

So how do we get vitamin D?  Historically, sun exposure has been the main source of vitamin D.  While our move has traditionally been to propose dietary sources of vitamins alone, this is difficult with vitamin D.  Even with vitamin D fortified foods, to get 1000 IU’s per day would order drinking 10 glasses of milk!  The river Cancer Society has wise that individuals should study taking a supplement of 1000 IU’s of vitamin D daily during the fall and winter months.  In the US, the dweller Society states that some grouping may order supplements, and this should be discussed with your health tending provider.

What do the authors do?  Spending 10 to 15 minutes in the sun without sunscreen (sunscreen with an SPF > 8 blocks formation of vitamin D) in cipher summer attire, crapper termination in the absorption of a whopping 5000 IU’s.  Of course, this is not advisable for everyone, sun endorsement (hats, sunscreen) should be used after this time, and you should never burn. 

But what if it is cloudy?  Many things change how much vitamin D is produced in our bodies by sunlight, including latitude, complexion, season, and time of day.  Clouds turn absorption by 50% and paint by 60%.  People with fair complexions order much less sun exposure to absorb vitamin D than those with darker complexions.  At latitudes above 40N (northern California), very little vitamin D is produced during the winter months, and hence the river Cancer Society’s congratulations for a supplement.

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Tags: endocrine cancer, boob cancer, mentality cancer, cancer drugs, living with cancer