Thread: Cancer sucks

^thanks for the reminder, S Landreth.

Aside from this recent death of a girl-friend, there was also another death of a guy friend ~ 4 yrs ago. He was in his early 40s then. Both were "clean living" types - didn't smoke, do drugs or drink alcohol, AFAIK. They were also of normal BMI/ body weight. I think the guy died of colon cancer and I dunno about the girl. Probably colon too, or something on the inside (not breast cancer, since that's more easily detectable).

I checked the PH statistics on cancer. Based on 2020 data, the top types of cancer here are: lung, liver, breast, colon, leukemia, cervical, ovarian, pancreatic, prostate and rectal. So colon cancer is the 4th highest.

The mom of a friend was diagnosed with colon cancer > 25 yrs ago. She recovered and is still healthy at 80+ years old.

I'm still sad over the death of my friend. She was a cheerful, talented person - great singer. RIP Marilen. Cancer sucks...

Was told the grand-daughter of one of my cousins has Leukemia but is doing fine after her first chemo treatment.

She’s not 2 years old.

Merck-Moderna vaccine helps reduce chances of skin cancer

A vaccine launched by Merck and Moderna was found to reduce the chances of skin cancer when used with the drug Keytruda, according to a new study released Monday.

The new results found that 79 percent of participants who received the vaccine and Keytruda stayed cancer-free for 18 months compared to just 62 percent of people who only received Merck’s Keytruda. The companies also said that the results of Phase Two showed mild side effects with the vaccine, like fatigue, injection site pain or chills.

“Today’s results provide further encouragement for the potential of mRNA as an individualized neoantigen therapy to positively impact patients with high-risk resected melanoma,” Kyle Holen, Moderna’s Senior Vice President and Head of Development, Therapeutics and Oncology, said in a statement.

“The profound observed reduction in the risk of recurrence-free survival suggests this combination may be a novel means of potentially extending the lives of patients with high-risk melanoma,” Holen said. “We look forward to starting the Phase 3 melanoma trial soon and expanding testing to lung cancer and beyond.”

This trial used 157 patients who had high risk stage 4 or 5 melanoma and who were disease-free after having the melanoma removed. The participants received the two drugs after the melanoma was removed and then received Keytruda every three weeks until they received 18 treatments.

The study will be starting its phase 3 of the trial in 2023, which will include patients with adjuvant melanoma to expand to additional tumor types. The companies completed its phase 3 study in December, finding it reduced the risk of recurrence or death by 44 percent among the participants. Phase 1 marked the first time that an mRNA vaccine created an immune response in a patient who was taking another drug.

During my visit in March I was able to confirm my grand niece had been suffering from hodgkin's lymphoma. Anyway, as I've reported in other threads, she has been in and out hospitals in Udon Thani and Khon Kaen for the last 18 months. Finally, however, the tumours have been removed, surgically, chemo'd or blasted with radiation to the point that she had reached the stage of stem cell surgery.

The cell extraction met the threshold so she didn't need any donor and things were really looking to be going well. She then had the last extra large dose of chemo before having the cells put back. I was close to thinking that after 18+ months this was finally all over.

Today she went into shock and rushed to ICU to be put on a ventilator. Things have settled down now and it appears her body had a reaction causing excessive fluid on the lung resulting in seizure. She is still in the ICU on a ventilator but is starting to breathe for herself again.

Poor kid, only 10 years old and fighting like hell to stay alive...

Shoot, that's tough for all, but especially her! Hope she hangs in there.

• Chemotherapy shortages push cancer centers toward crisis

Cancer centers are contending with shortages of key chemotherapy drugs, with potentially dire consequences once the scarcity starts hitting patients.

A new survey released this week by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) found that 93 percent of cancer centers are reporting shortages of carboplatin and 70 percent are reporting shortages of cisplatin. These two drugs are commonly used together to treat a wide variety of cancers — including breast, lung, prostate and many types of leukemias — often with the aim of curing them.

The survey conducted in May found that cancer centers were still able to treat patients with cisplatin without delays or claim denials, but only 64 percent of centers were able to keep patients on a regime of carboplatin. A fifth of cancer centers said they were able to continue prescribing carboplatin for some but not all of their patients.

According to Mike Ganio, director of pharmacy practice and quality for the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), the U.S. is seeing “a near-10 year high in active ongoing shortages”

Much of the current shortages stem from a major interruption in manufacturing that occurred when a facility in India, run by Intas Pharmaceuticals, halted production in March after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) discovered a “cascade of failures” in the plant’s quality control.

The FDA issued an import alert to the facility last week, stating all future shipments originating from the facility would be denied admission into the U.S. except for 24 drugs that are in short supply, including carboplatin and cisplatin.

“These are critical oncology medicines,” Alyssa Schatz, senior director of policy and advocacy for NCCN, said.

“I think the good news is that there are safe alternatives in many cases, but NCCN is concerned that a lack of guidance and clarification from payers on how those drugs will be covered with or without prior authorization can cause harmful delays in care,” she said.

Schatz noted that when cancer care was disrupted during the pandemic, insurance companies responded by providing flexibilities with telehealth and releasing guidance on coverage when it came to oral equivalents of chemotherapy that could be sent through the mail.

To help with the current chemotherapy shortages, she said insurance providers must provide this same type of response, providing clear guidance on waiving prior authorization for chemotherapy alternatives.

The shortages of these critical medications has caught the attention of Congress with Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin (Ill.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Gary Peters (Mich.) and Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) recently calling on the FDA to take immediate action, such as importing chemotherapy drugs and alternative treatments from other countries.

FDA Commissioner Robert Califf appeared to heed these calls when he announced last week that his agency would to allow the “temporary importation of certain foreign-approved versions of cisplatin products from FDA-registered facilities.”

The FDA is working with Qilu Pharmaceuticals in China to increase the availability of cisplatin and Canadian pharmaceutical company Apotex to distribute it.

These short term fixes may improve the situation for the time being, but stakeholders warn that drug shortages are an ever-increasing problem that needs to be addressed at the systemic level.

Schatz cited lower-priced generics as one factor behind drug shortages, albeit in a roundabout way.

“Paradoxically, low drug prices are a key driver of this shortage. We often hear about how the US overpays for drugs, but that conversation is primarily related to brand-name drugs,” said Schatz. “Generics manufacturers operate on a razor thin margin and that can lead to quality and supply issues.”

These margins pressure manufacturers to operate at near-capacity and reduce the number of makers in the market, leaving it vulnerable to shortage when crises occur.

“We’re talking about things that have low profit margins. Therefore there’s little incentive to invest in facilities, there’s little incentive for manufacturers to get into manufacturing those products,” Ganio from ASHP said.

Healthcare organizations continue to urge Congress to advance policies that incentivize manufacturers to invest in critical drug production, for cancer and other diseases, and improve how the Strategic National Stockpile functions and encourage stronger manufacturing quality.

To that end, Reps. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) and Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) reintroduced the Essential Medicines Strategic Stockpile Act earlier this year. The bill would direct federal agencies to develop a stockpile of 50 generic drugs at risk of shortage that could supply U.S. patients with their medicines for six months.

While this bill would not address the root cause of shortages, it would provide the market with a supply of drugs while a disruption to the supply chain was addressed, experts told The Hill.

In a letter to Califf and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on Thursday, a bipartisan group of 70 House lawmakers asked the officials how the federal government can improve its oversight and enforcement of pharmaceutical supply chains in light of the chemotherapy shortage.

“Patients, physicians, and pharmacists are often the last to know when an essential drug will no longer be available, yet, are affected by these shortages the most,” they wrote.

“We strive to ensure patients, physicians, and pharmacists never have to experience shortages of essential medications, but when shortages do occur it is vital that these individuals are made aware as quickly as possible so that they can better prepare.”

Originally Posted by Troy

Today she went into shock and rushed to ICU to be put on a ventilator. Things have settled down now and it appears her body had a reaction causing excessive fluid on the lung resulting in seizure. She is still in the ICU on a ventilator but is starting to breathe for herself again.

Poor kid, only 10 years old and fighting like hell to stay alive...

My daughter (works with cancer kids) will share horror stories with me from time to time.

Hope your grandniece is doing better.

She's home again now, but has to make the trek to Kon Kaen every couple of weeks for blood tests. Fingers crossed, things will have improved by the time we return.

Originally Posted by Troy

Fingers crossed, things will have improved by the time we return.

I just saw this thread update. I am so sorry to hear about someone so young, I will be pulling for her.

I am a night owl and I live close to a children's hospital. Sometimes in the early hours when it is quiet in the city, a helicopter flies over my house from a distant location in my area. When it does, I know that it is taking a sick or wounded child to that hospital. It makes my heart hurt, but since I follow the war in Ukraine when most here have the blinders on, my heart hurts a lot these days.

There was a few other dodgy looking skin blemishes but nothing as cancerous as that so she hit them with liquid nitrogen. They look shocking at the moment but nothing to worry about. Just gotta moisturise

@BLD - see, those Filipino sailors knew best since they always had lotion/ moisturizer. Kidding aside, I'm glad that your skin tumor got removed pronto.

@troy - sorry to hear about your grand niece. She's still so young & I hope she continues fighting & gets better soon.

Originally Posted by katie23

@BLD - see, those Filipino sailors knew best since they always had lotion/ moisturizer. Kidding aside, I'm glad that your skin tumor got removed pronto.

@troy - sorry to hear about your grand niece. She's still so young & I hope she continues fighting & gets better soon.

I thought about those filipinos with there moisturising hack and for sure i will heed there advice

That doc said its either a basil cell carcinoma or squamish one or the other she will cut that badboy out on sunday. Do the biopsy after. So confident is she that it needs to go

Sorry to hear that fondles, sounds like a nervous wait for the outcome
hope they get it sorted

Originally Posted by BLD

That doc said its either a basil cell carcinoma or squamish one or the other she will cut that badboy out on sunday. Do the biopsy after. So confident is she that it needs to go

I hope it all turns out well for you. I went to the hospital last weekend, the gf was nagging about a couple of moles on my back. Like you, out of sight, out of mind. The doc took a look and said I needed them removed and biopsy. When? Now. So I am sitting typing this with a few very uncomfortable stitches, waiting for the biopsy report.
I have had a couple of bits of basal cell removed already, nothing serious so far. Legacy of lying on beaches fifty years ago, I suppose.

Originally Posted by BLD

Sorry to hear that fondles, sounds like a nervous wait for the outcome
hope they get it sorted

Cheers mate, not overly worried.

Went into cardiac arrest 3 times during my first hospital visit so I guess my number is up soon....keep knocking on that door one day it will open !!

My memorys a bit vague but im pretty sure a thai doctor in udon thani cut this out years ago and a few years later an australian doc at the australian embassy clinic in vientiane cut it out again after liasing with AEK udon who never bothered to communicate the biopsy results with me . I guess i was busy getting on with things to give it a thought. I sure hope she chops the whole thing out this time. She said its going to be a pretty large incision. Fondles has got bigger problems

If you know someone younger. Good read.

• Cancer rates are climbing among young people. It’s not clear why

Vanessa Chapoy had just turned 24 when she felt the lump in her breast. It was “huge,” she remembers, “like the size of a walnut, or a big marble.” She went to the first in a series of doctors that night to have it checked out. Two and a half weeks later, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Stage two, she would learn.

“And my whole world flipped upside down,” Chapoy says.

She entered a gauntlet of treatments: a lumpectomy to cut out the tumor and a portion of surrounding breast tissue, fertility treatments so she could freeze her eggs, five months of chemotherapy and then a double mastectomy to remove both of her breasts.

Three years on, she’s still undergoing hormone therapy — an experience she likens to “early menopause” — and occasionally suffering from “chemo brain,” a form of brain fog resulting from chemotherapy that she says makes it more difficult for her to complete tasks or remember certain things.

“I don’t understand how this could happen,” she recalls telling a nurse at the beginning of it all. “I’m so young.”

Cancer, after all, most often strikes late in life. In the United States, nearly 60 percent of patients are 65 or older when they’re diagnosed.

But stories like Chapoy’s are becoming more common. In recent decades, cancer rates have been climbing among people under 50, the typical cut-off for when cancer is considered “early-onset.”

This “early-onset cancer epidemic,” as one recent study published in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology dubbed it, comprises a surge in the incidence of over a dozen different cancers in younger people since the 1990s in countries around the world.

In the U.S., the rate of early-onset cases rose by almost 18 percent between 2000 and 2019, even as cancer declined slightly in older adults, according to data from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Among Americans between 15 and 39 years old, an age group cancer researchers refer to as adolescents and young adults (AYAs), the surge was more pronounced still, topping 20 percent.

That increase has spanned genders, races and organs. It has stormed through young people’s blood and bone marrow, launched assaults on their gastrointestinal tracts, quartered itself in their reproductive organs. The incidence of breast cancer in Americans aged 15 to 39 rose more than 17 percent over the 19-year period. Myeloma rates spiked by over 30 percent. Colorectal cancer, by nearly 45 percent.

Why? Cancer researchers aren’t entirely sure.

The rising rates are “probably partially attributable to increasing uptake of screening and early detection” in certain cancer types, especially thyroid cancer and prostate cancer, the authors of the Nature study noted.

Archie Bleyer, a clinical research professor at the Knight Cancer Institute of the Oregon Health & Science University, says the surge in cases of thyroid cancer, as well as kidney cancer, is at least partly a result of “overdiagnosis” due to increased screenings, both for cancer and for other health concerns. The screenings have detected tumors and masses in those organs that “look like cancer, so they’ve got to call it carcinoma,” he explains. But they “would never have been a problem if they were never picked up,” because they typically wouldn’t spread or progress.

So “in some ways, it’s a false increase,” Bleyer says.

The surge in rates goes beyond what can be accounted for by increased screenings, however. Researchers hypothesize a slew of environmental and lifestyle changes since the mid-20th century have also driven a real rise in cases by increasing exposure to risk factors early in life.

The main suspect researchers point to is obesity, which has climbed steadily since the 1960s and become more common in childhood and adolescence. Many of the cancers rising among younger people have been tied to obesity, including breast cancer and uterine cancer, as well as colorectal cancer and several others impacting the gastrointestinal tract.

The increases in obesity-related cancers have been more “dramatic” than those among other types, suggesting obesity is a “big contributor” to the spike in early-onset cases, says Tomotaka Ugai, an instructor at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the lead author of the Nature study.


Beyond obesity itself, researchers believe a number of related factors could be involved: Westernized diets, sugar-sweetened beverages, red and processed meat, sedentary lifestyles, a decline in physical activity, metabolic conditions like type 2 diabetes.

And the list of suspects goes on. Bleyer says the increased use of diagnostic imaging like CT scans and X rays, which expose patients to low levels of carcinogenic radiation, could be contributing, especially for cancers impacting the blood and bone marrow. When it comes to the uptick in testicular cancer, meanwhile, he says rising cannabis use is likely the leading culprit.

People growing taller could also be a risk factor for several cancer types, he says. Ugai tells me there’s speculation changes in our sleep patterns could be involved, though evidence is “quite limited.” Marios Giannakis, a medical oncologist and researcher at the Dana-Farber Gastrointestinal Cancer Center, says changes in the microbiome — the community of microorganisms that populate the body — have been “implicated” in the increase in early-onset colorectal cancer. These changes can result from diet, lifestyle factors or even surgical procedures like C-sections.


Giannakis stresses that more research is needed to understand what’s behind the rising rates, including long-term prospective cohort studies that follow participants over extended periods of time.

“Finding out the why could be very relevant for prevention,” Giannakis says.

But as research continues, over 85,000 American adolescents and young adults are now being diagnosed with cancer each year. In 2020, Chapoy was one of the unlucky thousands. Two years later, I was.


I went to the dermatologist for the first time in my life in August. Within twenty minutes of stepping into the exam room, I’d had a suspicious mole cut out of my forearm. I learned days later that I’d had melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. I was 27.

My cancer was caught early and easily removed; a month after I first went to the dermatologist, all that remained of it was an inch-and-a-half-long scar and some haunting what-ifs. But that’s not the case for many adolescent and young adult patients. They’re often diagnosed at a more advanced stage, when cancer has already had time to grow and spread in the body. There are several reasons for that: They’re less likely to regularly visit the doctor than other patients. They’re more likely to be uninsured. And because cancer is relatively rare in the age group, it’s usually not top of mind for either doctors or patients as a possible explanation for symptoms.

When Chapoy went to urgent care the night she found the lump in her breast, she said she was told “it’s nothing to worry about. You’re probably ovulating.”

“It was a struggle getting the doctors to take me seriously at first,” she says. “If I had just listened to that first doctor, I wouldn’t be here.”

Despite the often late diagnoses, adolescents and young adults are more likely to survive their initial cancer diagnosis than older adults: More than 85 percent live to see the five-year mark, compared to 74 percent of 40- to 64-year-olds and fewer than 62 percent of those aged 65 and older.

But Chun Chao, a cancer epidemiologist with the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research & Evaluation, emphasizes that “the challenge for cancer survivors doesn’t stop when they complete their treatment.”

Cancer can recur or progress. And young survivors also face a heightened threat of developing a second cancer or an array of other medical conditions, Chao says, including “cardiovascular diseases, metabolic disorders, endocrine conditions, pulmonary diseases, liver disease, renal failure and musculoskeletal conditions.” In addition to those physical ailments, she notes survivors have an increased risk of severe depression or anxiety.

And the timing presents a unique set of challenges and disruptions to adolescent and young adult patients that extend beyond their health.

“They are at a transitional stage in life,” Chao says. “If you think about it, this is the age when people are trying to establish their independence. Some people are finishing up their education. People are trying to get their first job, just start to establish their career. And people are starting new families and starting to have kids. So at this particular age, having a cancer diagnosis can be a huge disruption to these goals.”

After Tatyana Ridgeway was diagnosed with stage one breast cancer when she was 26, she stepped away from work as she went through treatment: four cycles of chemotherapy and then proton radiation. Like Chapoy, she also underwent fertility treatments, as chemotherapy can negatively impact fertility and even cause early menopause.

The experience “shattered my idea of what parenthood was like. It shattered my idea of what your 20s are supposed to look like,” she says. “My ideas, my beliefs of — by this age, we’re going to start trying for a kid, and then by this age, we want to be done — all of those plans fell off the shelf and just broke.”

She was able to preserve some embryos. But it was costly, she says. Her IVF treatments were covered by insurance, but she had to take out a loan to cover the cost of cryopreservation.

Her other treatments weren’t cheap either. Each of her four cycles of chemotherapy cost $15,000, and her proton radiation altogether cost over $100,000. “That’s without insurance,” she says.

Chao notes that a “high proportion” of young adult survivors report financial hardships related to cancer, including “having to borrow money, going into debt or even filing for bankruptcy.”

Ridgeway, who is Black, says she also looked into cold cap therapy, which can help reduce hair loss brought on by chemotherapy. But she learned no one with her hair texture — “textured, curly, kinky hair” — had been included in trials for the therapy, and no one her age had been studied, either.

“There’s a lack of research specific to this age group,” says Alison Silberman, the CEO of Stupid Cancer, a nonprofit that advocates for adolescents and young adults impacted by the disease. She describes the demographic as an “underserved and underrepresented population” when it comes to cancer.

“There has been a growing awareness” over the last couple decades amid the increase in cases, she says. But it “depends on where you are. A lot of the larger academic institutions are well versed in AYA needs and challenges and differences. That doesn’t happen as much in the smaller community settings.” And she notes while there’s “slightly more academic research,” there may still not be “as much clinical research.”

“I think there’s still a lot of work to be done,” she says.

Researchers stress the importance of further raising awareness about cancer in the age group — among both young people themselves and their doctors — and studying their cases so treatment can be better tailored.

Danielle Carnival, the White House cancer moonshot coordinator, says the administration is “really focused on how to bridge the gap” in cancer care for adolescents and young adults, “both in understanding the science and helping serve those patients better.”

The administration is closely following research into potential causes for the increase in cases and prioritizing “decreasing the impact of preventable cancers,” she says, including by working to further lower smoking rates and by “looking at nutrition and lifestyle.”

Bleyer, of the Knight Cancer Institute, points to lung cancer and melanoma as “examples of how we can do better” at preventing early-onset cancer. Both have beaten against the current in recent years, growing scarcer in the young even as other cancers have become more common. Researchers have linked lung cancer’s drop-off to the decline in smoking and melanoma’s to the embrace of sun protection.

For now, though, the overall rise in rates shows no sign of stopping. And it may be a canary in a coal mine.

“One of the reasons that we look at trends in younger adults is because it’s the best way to evaluate progress, because that’s where you first see changing patterns in cancer,” says Rebecca Siegel, a cancer epidemiologist and Senior Scientific Director of Surveillance Research at the American Cancer Society.

Several cancer researchers I spoke to agree: The age group now passing through adolescence and young adulthood, who were buffeted by a not yet fully understood cocktail of risk factors in the early years of their lives, will likely continue to suffer higher rates of cancer as they get older.

It’s already happening, at least for colorectal cancer, Siegel says: Since 2010, advanced cancers of that type have become more common among Americans aged 50 to 64.

“The younger people have elevated risk their whole life,” says Siegel. “As they age, they will carry that elevated risk with them.”

__________

6 months and he was dead

About skin cancer, if you’re in SE Asia. It doesn’t cost much or take much of your time to schedule a routine checkup.

I’m blond, blue and grew up in S. Florida. Lived in the sun and now I have to question every unusual spot I see.

About the 6 month remark I made above. Knew a guy in S. Florida and he found out he had skin cancer. He was dead within 6 months.

Hope all three Fondles (thank goodness you brought it to the attention of your primary/main doctor), BLD and Shutree get better news soon.

On sunday it was supposed to get cut out but they called and said the doc was sick and it would be about a month before i could see her. This was a bit distressing so i found a doc on monday who looked at it and said its likely basil cell melinoma not as dangerous as squamish , booked me in for tuesday and its been cut out . Go back to remove the stitches in 2 weeks and get biopsy result he said they usually go 3mm but as it was near the coller bone he went 5mm. Medical care in oz is great mostly you pay nothing. Skin is different you pay . But not to much. This was $250
Get $ 40 back from medicare. The doc says if the biopsy says he hasnt gone deep enough, then same procedure but no charge. So confident was he. Pretty chuffed but will wait for the biopsy results before relaxing

Originally Posted by Shutree

I went to the hospital last weekend, the gf was nagging about a couple of moles on my back. Like you, out of sight, out of mind. The doc took a look and said I needed them removed and biopsy.

I spoke to the doc today. Both biopsies were negative for cancer, just ugly growths. I hope others get good news too.

My younger sister just had a tumour removered from her brain and they found 4 other smaller growths that will be treated with radiation.

They also found tumours on her pituitary gland and one on her lung.

I spoke with her today and she is very positive about beating the cancers which I am pleased about, in spite of the grim prognoses.

I just told her take 1 day at a time and build your health back so she can come and visit me in Thailand. She has promised me she will do so.

To be honest I have not spoken to her for 10 years due to a dispute I could not forgive her for but now in her hour of need I told her to forget the past and let us overcome what we have in front of us today.

A wearable ultrasound scanner could detect breast cancer earlier | MIT News

When breast cancer is diagnosed in the earliest stages, the survival rate is nearly 100 percent. However, for tumors detected in later stages, that rate drops to around 25 percent.

In hopes of improving the overall survival rate for breast cancer patients, MIT researchers have designed a wearable ultrasound device that could allow people to detect tumors when they are still in early stages. In particular, it could be valuable for patients at high risk of developing breast cancer in between routine mammograms.

The device is a flexible patch that can be attached to a bra, allowing the wearer to move an ultrasound tracker along the patch and image the breast tissue from different angles. In the new study, the researchers showed that they could obtain ultrasound images with resolution comparable to that of the ultrasound probes used in medical imaging centers.

“We changed the form factor of the ultrasound technology so that it can be used in your home. It’s portable and easy to use, and provides real-time, user-friendly monitoring of breast tissue,” says Canan Dagdeviren, an associate professor in MIT’s Media Lab and the senior author of the study.

MIT graduate student Wenya Du, Research Scientist Lin Zhang, Emma Suh ’23, and Dabin Lin, a professor at Xi’an Technological University, are the lead authors of the paper, which appears today in Science Advances.

________

Originally Posted by BLD

So confident was he. Pretty chuffed but will wait for the biopsy results before relaxing

well?????????

Originally Posted by Shutree

I spoke to the doc today. Both biopsies were negative for cancer, just ugly growths. I hope others get good news too.

good you're checking!

Originally Posted by Loy Toy

My younger sister just had a tumour removered from her brain and they found 4 other smaller growths that will be treated with radiation.

They also found tumours on her pituitary gland and one on her lung.

I spoke with her today and she is very positive about beating the cancers which I am pleased about, in spite of the grim prognoses.

I just told her take 1 day at a time and build your health back so she can come and visit me in Thailand. She has promised me she will do so.

To be honest I have not spoken to her for 10 years due to a dispute I could not forgive her for but now in her hour of need I told her to forget the past and let us overcome what we have in front of us today.

LT, I hope your sister is doing better and you’ll share some news with everyone.

^ditto. @LT - I hope your sister is doing well and fighting those C-cells.

I've just received word from common friends that the mom of a millenial hike-mate has passed away from Stage 4 breast cancer. She was in her early 60s. I've heard that she beat the cancer some years ago and it had recurred. Just found out about the Stage 4 some weeks ago, then received the sad news yesterday. RIP, Mrs. J.E - E's mom.

Cancer s*cks...