Cancer sucks

**youneverknow** · 30-09-2013, 08:08 AM

Sorry for all you folks. I doubt there are many who have never been affected by cancer. I lost my mother. My father had it in his neck but survived. The Thai neighbor here in Surin has just finished radiation for the same cancer my father had. Must have been from drinking or smoking.

I wish all of you who suffer from it or have a family member suffering from it health.

**peterpan** · 30-09-2013, 08:22 AM

My wifes sister succumbed this week, a simple country woman, never smoked or had a drink that I know of.
Sad because she has led a simple life, not even been to Bangkok or in fact never left even her home village in baan nawk, her husband used to dump her her regularly, she would go back to him, why she has no other means to live.

**beerlaodrinker** · 30-09-2013, 09:31 AM

Sorry to hear that NR

**Morden** · 30-09-2013, 10:23 AM

Originally Posted by November Rain

Thanks. Don't know what it was, but Mum died at 9:40am this morning.

I'm so sorry. I can't imagine what you are going through just now but hope that time heals soon.

**patsycat** · 30-09-2013, 01:06 PM

NR I am so, so sorry to hear your sad news.

**S Landreth** · 29-11-2013, 05:10 AM

Oncology nurse navigators help cancer patients cope early in care

When Group Health patients received support from a nurse navigator, or advocate, soon after a cancer diagnosis, they had better experiences and fewer problems with their care - particularly in health information, care coordination, and psychological and social care - according to a randomized controlled trial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Patients with a nurse navigator reported feeling better supported emotionally and more involved in their care. They also said they were better informed and more prepared for the future. And they tended to feel that the health care team had gone out of their way to make them feel better emotionally.

"Hearing that you have cancer is so difficult," said lead author Ed Wagner, MD, MPH, a senior investigator at Group Health Research Institute and director emeritus of the Institute's MacColl Center for Health Care Innovation. Right after a cancer diagnosis, patients and their families often need extra help: with information, translating medical jargon, psychological and social support, and coordinating care from various health providers. That's what Dr. Wagner learned earlier from studying the perspectives of patients, families, providers, and experts around the country.

"It makes sense that patients would benefit from having a single point person devoted to providing support and coordination of services," said Dr. Wagner's coauthor Ruth McCorkle, PhD, RN, the Florence Schorske Wald professor of nursing at Yale School of Nursing and a professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health. "Oncology nurse navigator programs are proliferating across the country, but they are highly variable because there hasn't been much rigorous evidence."

In this randomized controlled trial, half of the 251 adult patients newly diagnosed with cancer were assigned to an oncology nurse navigator to help them for four months. Starting two weeks after the diagnosis, the nurse navigator initiated weekly phone calls and contacted each patient an average of 18 times, including meeting in person at least once with each patient: for instance, accompanying them to a doctor's appointment.

The other group of the patients received "enhanced usual care" consisting of educational material designed by a patient advisory committee. Most (190) of the patients had breast cancer, but 30 had lung and 31 had colon or rectal cancer. Patient-reported outcomes were measured at baseline, four months, and one year.

Some of the differences between the groups persisted for eight months after patients' last contact with a nurse navigator. "That suggests that the nurse navigators helped patients to develop the confidence and skills to manage their illness and treatment more effectively," Dr. Wagner said. "This is important because it's crucial for patients to be involved in their care and self-care."

Overall costs of health care, including the costs of the intervention, didn't rise at all with the nurse navigator intervention - and in lung cancer patients, they might have actually declined. No overall changes were detected in patients' quality of life or depression. "That might have been because our patients had high quality of life to start with," Dr. Wagner said, "and our way of measuring that might not have been sensitive enough."

The oncology nurse navigators had experience with cancer patients, received special training to deal with psychosocial distress, and were familiar with the Group Health system. "Our system tends to be better coordinated than average in the United States," Dr. Wagner said. "Further research is needed to see how well nurse navigation works in more fragmented care systems - and whether it can reduce the costs of cancer care."

Group Health was so impressed with this work that it has already incorporated an oncology nurse navigator into usual care for women newly diagnosed with breast cancer at its Capitol Hill campus - even before the research was published.

Patient Navigation Improves the Care Experience for Patients With Newly Diagnosed Cancer

**Takeovers** · 08-12-2013, 08:07 PM

Personalized cell therapy

A promising new type of treatment, that really gives the chance to cure. Presently tested only on Leukemia but tests on other types of cancer will follow.

Nick Wilkins was diagnosed with leukemia when he was 4 years old, and when the cancer kept bouncing back, impervious to all the different treatments the doctors tried, his father sat him down for a talk.
John Wilkins explained to Nick, who was by then 14, that doctors had tried chemotherapy, radiation, even a bone marrow transplant from his sister.
"I explained to him that we're running out of options," Wilkins remembers telling his son.
There was one possible treatment they could try: an experimental therapy at the University of Pennsylvania.
He asked his son if he understood what it would mean if this treatment didn't work.
"He understood he could die," Wilkins says. "He was very stoic."
A few months later, Nick traveled from his home in Virginia to Philadelphia to become a part of the experiment.
This new therapy was decidedly different from the treatments he'd received before: Instead of attacking his cancer with poisons like chemotherapy and radiation, the Philadelphia doctors taught Nick's own immune cells to become more adept at killing the cancer.
Two months later, he emerged cancer-free. It's been six months since Nick, now 15, received the personalized cell therapy, and doctors still can find no trace of leukemia in his system.
Twenty-one other young people received the same treatment at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and 18 of them, like Nick, went into complete remission -- one of them has been disease-free for 20 months. The Penn doctors released their findings this weekend at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology.
"It gives us hope that this is a cure," Nick's father says. "They're really close. I think they're really onto something."
'A whole new realm of medicine '
At the conference, two other cancer centers -- Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York and the National Cancer Institute -- will be announcing results with immunotherapies like the one Nick received. The results are promising, especially considering that the patients had no success with practically every other therapy.
"This is absolutely one of the more exciting advances I've seen in cancer therapy in the last 20 years," said Dr. David Porter, a hematologist and oncologist at Penn. "We've entered into a whole new realm of medicine."
In the therapy, doctors first remove the patient's T-cells, which play a crucial role in the immune system. They then reprogram the cells by transferring in new genes. Once infused back into the body, each modified cell multiplies to 10,000 cells. These "hunter" cells then track down and kill the cancer in a patient's body.
Essentially, researchers are trying to train Nick's body to fight off cancer in much the same way our bodies fight off the common cold.
In addition to the pediatric patients, Penn scientists tried the therapy out in 37 adults with leukemia, and 12 went into complete remission. Eight more patients went into partial remission and saw some improvements in their disease.
The treatment does make patients have flulike symptoms for a short period of time -- Nick got so sick he ended up in the intensive care unit for a day -- but patients are spared some of the more severe and long-lasting side effects of extensive chemotherapy.
Penn will now work with other medical centers to test the therapy in more patients, and they plan to try the therapy out in other types of blood cancers and later in solid tumors.
A university press release says it has a licensing relationship with the pharmaceutical company Novartis and "received significant financial benefit" from the trial, and Porter and other inventors of the technology "have benefited financially and/or may benefit financially in the future."
Searching for one-in-a-million cancer cells
The big question is whether Nick's leukemia will come back.
Doctors are cautiously optimistic. The studies have only been going on since 2010, but so far relapse rates have been relatively low: of the 18 other pediatric patients who went into complete remission, only five have relapsed and of the 12 adults who went into complete remission, only one relapsed. Some of the adult patients have been cancer-free and without a relapse for more than three years and counting.
Relapses after this personalized cell therapy may be more promising than relapses after chemotherapy or a bone marrow transplant, Porter explained.
First, doctors have been delighted to find the reengineered T-cells -- the ones that know how to hunt down and attack cancer -- are still alive in the patients' bodies after more than three years.

"The genetically modified T-cells have survived," Porter said. "They're still present and functional and have the ability to protect against recurrence."
Second, before declaring patients in remission, Penn doctors scoured especially hard for errant leukemia cells.
Traditionally, for the kind of leukemia Nick has, doctors can find one in 1,000 to one in 10,000 cancer cells. But Penn's technology could find one in 100,000 to one in a million cancer cells, and didn't find any in Nick or any of the patients who went into complete remission.
'It's not a fluke'
One of the best aspects of this new treatment is that it won't be terribly difficult to reproduce at other medical centers, Porter said, and one day, instead of being used only experimentally, it could be available to anyone who needed it.
"Our hope is that this can progress really quite quickly," he said. "It won't be available to everyone next year, but I don't think it would take a decade, either."
Right now patients can only get this therapy if they're in a study, but Dr. Renier Brentjens, director for cellular therapeutics at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, says he thinks it could become available to all patients in just three to five years.
"When you have three centers all with a substantial number of patients seeing the same thing -- that these cells work in this disease - you know it's not a fluke," he said.
Two days ago, Brentjens became the co-founder of Juno Therapeutics, a for-profit biotech start-up company that's working on immunotherapies.
"Fifteen years ago I was in the lab looking at these cells kill tumor cells in a petri dish and then I saw them kill tumor cells in mice, and then finally in humans," Brentjens said.
He says he'll never forget the first patient he treated, who initially had an enormous amount of cancer cells in his bone marrow. Then after the therapy, Brentjens looked under the microscope and, in awe, realized he couldn't find a single cancer cell.
"I can't describe what that's like," he said. "It's fantastic."

Killing cancer like the common cold - CNN.com

**billy the kid** · 09-12-2013, 05:51 PM

Originally Posted by youneverknow

Must have been from drinking or smoking.

my mum died with the cancer ,, she smoked one fag a day and rarely drank.

Stress may also play a part in it.

**MissTraveller** · 10-12-2013, 04:01 AM

^I think stress, genetics and more importantly diet play a big role in cancer.

Sorry to hear all the bad news on this thread. NR - I can't imagine not having my mom at my wedding.

I lost my aunt and a few other relatives to cancer as well. Here's to a healthy and happy New Year 2014!

**billy the kid** · 10-12-2013, 06:17 PM

Originally Posted by MissTraveller

more importantly diet play a big role in cancer.

shit in the air ,the water, and the food chain.
seems that whatever mistakes humans make
humans have to swallow and take to an early grave.
when i was a kid , i only ever knew of 2 cases of cancer
and now it's everywhere.
my dad smoked and drank all his life and kicked the bucket at age 87.

**November Rain** · 17-12-2013, 12:32 PM

Signed up yesterday to do Cancer Research UK's Dryathlon. Basically, it's giving up drinking for the month of January to raise money for Cancer Research (and anyone who knows me knows how much I luuurrve my wine). Hopefully, a lot of people in UK will join in to raise a bit of money. Anything to stop (hopefully, one day) others having to go through what my Mum went through, especially in her last weeks, has got to be good.

**S Landreth** · 18-12-2013, 11:16 AM

FIRST STEP OF METASTASIS HALTED IN MICE WITH BREAST CANCER

Cell biologists at Johns Hopkins have identified a unique class of breast cancer cells that lead the process of invasion into surrounding tissues. Because invasion is the first step in the deadly process of cancer metastasis, the researchers say they may have found a weak link in cancer's armor and a possible new target for therapy. A summary of their results will be published online in the journal Cell on Dec. 12.

"Metastasis is what most threatens breast cancer patients, and we have found a way to stop the first part of the process in mice," says Andrew Ewald, Ph.D., assistant professor of cell biology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Before metastasis occurs, single cells on the edge of a tumor, termed leader cells, form protrusions into the surrounding tissue, like someone dipping a toe in to test the water before deciding to venture farther, Ewald says. If the conditions are right, the leader cells act as guides, with many tumor cells following behind, as they escape the confines of the tumor into the healthy tissue beyond. Full metastasis occurs when the cells succeed in migrating to a new location — the lungs, for example — and set up shop, creating a new tumor.

Beginning with the idea that some cells in the tumor might be more invasive than others, Ewald's team grew mouse tumors in the laboratory in special 3-D gels that mimic the environment that surrounds breast tumors in human patients. Kevin Cheung, M.D., a medical oncology fellow in the Ewald lab, observed that the cancer cells infiltrated the gels in groups, with a few cells out in front and the rest following behind.

Looking for a molecular cause for the apparent “leadership” seen in the initiating cells, Cheung searched for proteins that were uniquely present in the leader cells. They identified one protein, cytokeratin 14, or K14, that was present in almost all leader cells but was very rare in the noninvasive parts of the tumor. When the team looked at tumors from mice that had other types of breast cancer — some more prone to invasion and others less prone — all had leader cells containing K14. The more invasive a tumor was, the more cells with K14 it had.

The team then grew breast tumors from 10 breast cancer patients in 3-D gels and found that the leader cells in these human tumors also contained K14. "Our research shows that the most invasive cells in breast tumors express K14 across all types of breast cancer,” says Cheung. “Now we need to learn how to eliminate these leader cells from breast tumors in patients."

more

**Latindancer** · 08-01-2014, 04:06 PM

Melbourne scientists say they have made a major breakthrough in the fight against several cancers, which could lead to new drugs to treat the disease.

Scientists at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute say they have worked out how to suppress a protein which causes diseases including leukaemia and lymphoma.
The researchers say the finding may now lead to the development of medicines that mimic their approach.
Researchers have known for some time that a protein called MYC is not only present in the body's healthy cells but also at high levels in about 70 per cent of all cancers.

For more than three decades scientists at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have been trying to work out how the protein flourishes in the body and drives cancer development. They say they have found cancer cells rely on protein MCL-1 to live and if its growth can be stopped, the existing cancer cells could be killed off.
The institute's Dr Gemma Kelly is one of the researchers working on the protein.
"We were interested to determine how these MYC-driven cancer cells stay alive because obviously this would help to identify targets in new drugs," she said.
"What we've found is that we can kill the particular cancers, the lymphoma cells we were looking at, by disabling another protein called MCL-1.
"The way that we do it is genetically or using drug-mimicking tools in the lab, but what we would hope in the future is that there would be specific drugs or inhibitors that would target MCL-1 which could then be used in the clinic.
"Our research is focused on lymphomas and in particular we've done some work on a human lymphoma called Burkitt's lymphoma.
"But we know that MYC is deregulated in, it can be up to 70 per cent of human cancers including other lymphomas, leukaemias and other cellular cancers.
"And so we would hope that our resources would be broadly applicable to these cancers as well. But this will be something that we can determine at a future point."
Researchers killing cancer in 72 hours

Dr Kelly says one of the most exciting aspects of the team's discovery is that the lymphoma cells they were experimenting with could be killed off within 24 to 72 hours.
It is hoped that success in the lab can now be turned into a treatment for cancer patients.
"We already know that there is a lot of interest into developing these particular types of drugs," Dr Kelly said.
"We hope that in the next couple of years these will become available for us to test in our preclinical models and then this will go on to the next stage and go into clinical trials in patients."
There are concerns the side effects of some of the treatments may be quite severe but Dr Kelly says their strategy has potential.
"We have some of our own published data and from other people and what this really suggests is that our cancer cells, our lymphoma cells, seem to be more susceptible to inhibition of this protein MCL-1 than the normal healthy cells," she said.
"And so this suggests to us that there can be this therapeutic window whereby we can kill off the cancer cells and maybe have more acceptable kind of side effects on the normal healthy cells."
Australian leukaemia patients 'would benefit from local trials'

The institute's Professor Andreas Strasser says the development of new drugs has already begun, but clinical trials could still be a few years away.
"Some of us have already spoken at conferences about it and have had very positive feedback from clinicians, from other scientists and probably most importantly, people from pharmaceutical companies that are now even more interested than before," he said.
"It depends very much how long it will take for chemists to generate compounds that can be tested (before clinical trials begin).
"Because this process is already in parallel happening, my loose prediction is two years, maybe three years."
Australia's Leukaemia Foundation is one of several organisations both here and overseas funding the research.
Its national manager of support services, Anthony Steele, says patients will be cautiously optimistic about the discovery.
"Some of our research coming out of Australia is the best in the world. We get lots of applications and it's great to be able to find those gems that we're able to fund," he said.
"One of the things is that when these discoveries are made overseas and then clinical trial commence with the treatment for it, Australians don't often get access to those clinical trials and therefore have a very delayed access to treatment.
"Whereas if the discoveries are found in Australia, it goes to trial in Australia, Australian patients who've got no other options get access to these new therapies very early and hopefully will lead to some very good outcomes."
The research has been published today in the journal Genes and Development.

Melbourne scientists suppress cancer-causing MCL-1 protein, breakthrough gives hope for new treatment - Yahoo!7

**November Rain** · 21-01-2014, 06:44 AM

Just out of interest:

Today my sister (2 years younger than me, and the success story of the family) and I talked for the first time about the probability of us getting breast cancer. It turns out, we are both convinced we'll get it. She wants the gene test and is willing to get them cut off now, dependent on result, of course. This strikes me as more than drastic, because she got implants. OK, I know I'm crazy!
Mum wanted us both to get the test, way before she got the final diagnosis. I always disagreed. But tonight I made a pact with my sister that we'd both get the test. Yeah, it makes sense. But I'm terrified. If they say I'm going to get it (as I expect) how can I go through with surgery?
I know I'm an idiot. Sorry

**kingwilly** · 21-01-2014, 07:11 AM

But, they might say you won't.

Hard decision for both of you. Chin up.

**nidhogg** · 24-01-2014, 05:06 PM

Originally Posted by November Rain

Just out of interest:

Today my sister (2 years younger than me, and the success story of the family) and I talked for the first time about the probability of us getting breast cancer. It turns out, we are both convinced we'll get it. She wants the gene test and is willing to get them cut off now, dependent on result, of course. This strikes me as more than drastic, because she got implants. OK, I know I'm crazy!
Mum wanted us both to get the test, way before she got the final diagnosis. I always disagreed. But tonight I made a pact with my sister that we'd both get the test. Yeah, it makes sense. But I'm terrified. If they say I'm going to get it (as I expect) how can I go through with surgery?
I know I'm an idiot. Sorry

You are not an idiot, and its something many, many women face.

For the test to be worth it, you should have a family history of breast cancer - and this means more than just your mother. Your aunts, grandmother (on your mother side), her sisters etc. If you have that it is worth getting the test done. If not, it is unlikely (note "unlikely") to offer any help one way or another.

BRCA1 and BRCA2: Cancer Risk and Genetic Testing Fact Sheet - National Cancer Institute

**Boon Mee** · 24-01-2014, 05:13 PM

Don't know if it's been mentioned in this thread as yet but Angelina Jolie's family had/has a history of breast cancer so she got proactive, recall?

That would be a hard decision for any woman to make but she soldiered on probably because reconstructive surgery is pretty advanced these days.

**nidhogg** · 24-01-2014, 05:16 PM

American guidelines:

Mutations in the BRCA genes cause particular patterns of cancer down the generations. According to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), you may have a higher than average risk of breast cancer if you have one of the following in your family:

A mother or sister diagnosed with breast cancer before the age of 40
2 close relatives from the same side of the family diagnosed with breast cancer – at least one must be a mother, sister or daughter
3 close relatives diagnosed with breast cancer at any age
A father or brother diagnosed with breast cancer at any age
A mother or sister with breast cancer in both breasts – the first cancer diagnosed before the age of 50
1 close relative with ovarian cancer and 1 with breast cancer, diagnosed at any age – at least one must be a mother, sister or daughter

The affected relatives must come from the same side of your family (either your mother’s side or your father’s side) and they must be your blood relatives. A close relative means a parent, brother or sister, child, grandparent, aunt or uncle, nephew or niece.

**November Rain** · 24-01-2014, 05:22 PM

Thanks, nidhogg.
My mum's aunt and her grandmother are the only other ones who have had breast cancer in her family. My paternal grandmother has had it too, but I don't know any more about that side of the family, as my Dad broke off all contact with them.

That might not sound like many, and probably isn't, but on my Mum's side, my gran & her sister (breast cancer), my mum (breast cancer) and her sister and me & my sister are the only females.

It's the proactive bit I don't know if I can come to terms with (if I have to, which I probably won't), Booners. That's why I always said no when my mum urged me to be tested.
Anyway, seeing doc in a couple of weeks to get more info. So, I'm starting the ball rolling

**November Rain** · 24-01-2014, 05:25 PM

Originally Posted by nidhogg

A mother or sister with breast cancer in both breasts – the first cancer diagnosed before the age of 50

That one fits. Diagnosed 3 times actually. The 3rd time it was (breast cancer) in her bones & that was the one that killed her.

**Boon Mee** · 24-01-2014, 05:38 PM

Originally Posted by November Rain

It's the proactive bit I don't know if I can come to terms with (if I have to, which I probably won't), Booners. That's why I always said no when my mum urged me to be tested.
Anyway, seeing doc in a couple of weeks to get more info. So, I'm starting the ball rolling

Well, if a woman who is in the spotlight as much as Jolie is and can have the surgery, I'll bet others can take that as a 'role model' as such and follow suit.

It's not a decision a male can make, obviously, discussing the issue on an anonymous web board.

Best of luck NR.

**nidhogg** · 24-01-2014, 05:41 PM

Seems a good resource

Breast cancer genes : Cancer Research UK : CancerHelp UK

**Mr Lick** · 24-01-2014, 07:42 PM

Having an 'Angelina' can be seen as quite trendy nowadays. The risk associated with not doing something positive if one has the dreaded gene can obviously be greater.

Having witnessed the downs my sister has endured during the past 9 months with lymphoma and subsequent chemo treatment relating to breast cancer it would have been far better to have gone through preventative surgery had she been aware beforehand. She actually took the surgical removal of her breast in her stride, bless her.

Hoping the results are clear for you NR.

**chassamui** · 24-01-2014, 07:54 PM

Good luck NR. Not easy for you but a lot of folks will have things crossed for you to come through it with a good outcome.

**November Rain** · 24-01-2014, 08:30 PM

Originally Posted by Mr Lick

She actually took the surgical removal of her breast in her stride, bless her.

So did Mum. It's just the thought of taking them off before diagnosis. I know how stupid I sound, and that I'll probably not even have that decision to make. It's just something that's hard to get my head around.
Thanks, Chas & all

How's your recovery going, Mr Lick? And how's your sister doing?

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