Hi everyone! I've just spent four hours trying to clear messages. It's
hard to keep up as I work 12 hour graveyard shifts, have a new husband and a
16 year old daughter who is more demanding than a 2 year old. And her and
my husband (who used to like each other) seem like to angry teenagers most
the time. After 12 years of being single I don't know what possesed me to
remarry! Anyway even my mouse is tired of deleting and it's only 6 weeks
old! but thank goodness I bought the computer. I get such joy being here
and reading all the messages and information and I feel so grateful. As I
listen to Conway Twitty & Randy Travis I cry and laugh and then throw in
some Elvis for inspiration. It's a wonderful place to safely go and FEEL.
Thank you all.
As to the latest news. My son Tim met with the Bone Marrow Transplant team
last week and they scared us all to death. He and his wife came home and
called both of us mothers and said we would have to take over raising the
kids for weeks, months, or more. Needless to say this put me in a panic as
I am almost done raising my 5th child and do not relish another round. Then
we met with my mom's oncologist on Friday and he is so wonderful and logical
and explained that if we have to help with the kids it will only be for
short periods of time. Just if they are ill etc. He tries to almost
everything except the radiation and bone marrow on an outpatient basis, even
when Tim is ill from infections he will be doing his antibiotics at home and
in the clinic as an outpatient for chemo and transfusions. I am so glad to
know this Dr. It is already making all the difference. The hospital had
not retested Tim's bone marrow since the last chemo, nor done an echo
cardiogram and many other things that this Dr is checking out before
continueing the chemo. It will be about 5 months yet before the BMT so we
do have some breathing space. Best of all this Dr and the hospital are in
out town so we don't have long distance calls, transportation problems and
all that. I feel 100% better and so do Tim and his wife and her family. If
he's in the hospital for whatever it's close to my work and I can just go by
before and after work. He will go to Oregon for the BMT but the Dr assures
us that the nursing staff on that ward is the cream of the crop so we won't
have the problems we had last time.
Thank to all of you for all the jokes, information, love and support. I
know that we have a long journey but because you are there I am acquiring
more courage to keep on. Love, Sherry
-----Original Message-----
From: lillian jennings <firefly@islc.net>
To: mol-cancer@lists.meds.com <mol-cancer@lists.meds.com>
Date: Saturday, September 12, 1998 4:14 PM
Subject: [MOL] NEWS Briefings on Cancer
>News About Cancer Treatments:
>
> Tracking a cancer cure
> A sheaf of new studies shed more
> light on ways to combat a killer
>
> BY MARY BROPHY MARCUS
>
> Cancer researchers used last week's meeting of the
> American Society of Clinical Oncology as the forum
> for announcing the results of several new cancer
> studies. New information from the conference and in
> recent medical journals shows the unprecedented
> progress scientists are making toward halting the
> many forms of the disease:
>
> Camptosar. A relatively new injectable
> chemotherapy drug may help conquer the second
> leading cause of cancer deaths in the United
> States--colorectal cancer. Camptosar, made by
> Pharmacia & Upjohn of Kalamazoo, Mich., from the
> Chinese Camptotheca acuminata tree, was
> approved two years ago by the Food and Drug
> Administration. Recent clinical trials found it shrank
> and slowed the growth of tumors in the lower
> digestive tract. Researchers announced that
> Camptosar was effective in patients whose colon
> cancer had spread throughout the body and
> recurred after standard chemotherapy. In the trials,
> 36 percent of 279 patients on Camptosar were alive
> after a year, while only 14 percent of patients who
> had received usual care survived. Oncologists plan
> to examine the drug's effectiveness in people with
> early-stage colon cancer, as well as in cancers of
> the liver, esophagus, and stomach.
>
> Taxol. The word cure was also batted around at
> the meeting in Los Angeles during discussions of
> Taxol, a breast cancer fighter derived from the yew
> tree. Research showed that when standard
> chemotherapy and Taxol are administered after
> surgery in women whose cancer has traveled to
> their lymph nodes, death rates dropped 26 percent
> and the chances of the cancer's return were
> reduced 22 percent, compared with patients who
> received only standard chemotherapy. Until now,
> doctors have used Bristol-Myers Squibb's drug
> primarily to treat advanced breast cancers. Experts
> hope research in early-stage cancer patients will
> show Taxol can destroy bad cells before they fan
> out to the lymph nodes. Of 183,000 women
> diagnosed with breast cancer each year, it is
> estimated that as many as 75,500 will be eligible
> for the new therapy. "Taxol is going to
> unquestionably save lives," says Larry Norton, head
> of medical oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering
> Cancer Center, who is among those researching
> the drug.
>
> Herceptin. About one third of breast cancer
> patients carry large amounts of a protein called
> HER2. Standard chemotherapy doesn't work with
> very ill breast cancer patients with a lot of HER2.
> But doctors have found that they can extend life for
> 25 percent of these women using a drug called
> Herceptin, by Genentech of South San Francisco,
> Calif. This drug is exciting to oncologists, says
> Sloan-Kettering's Norton, because when used in
> combination with Taxol, it appears to double, even
> triple, Taxol's effectiveness without adding major
> side effects.
>
> SERMs. Further research was introduced
> confirming the power of Eli Lilly's raloxifene in
> reducing the risk of breast cancer. The drug,
> marketed as Evista, is what is called a selective
> estrogen receptor modulator, or SERM. Designed
> to fight osteoporosis by activating special estrogen
> receptors in bone, raloxifene appears to reduce the
> risk of breast cancer by more than 50 percent, and
> by as much as 83 percent in post-menopausal
> women. Unlike tamoxifene, another SERM made by
> Zeneca, it's not linked to increases in uterine
> cancer.
>
> PSA test. Many urologists recommend that men
> over 50 get an annual PSA (prostate specific
> antigen) blood test, which measures a protein that
> rises when prostate cancer is present. Another
> blood test is now available for men whose PSA
> results fall between 4 and 10, what doctors
> consider a gray area. Biopsies are needed to know
> if cancer exists for sure. The new free PSA test,
> which measures PSA that floats free or is not
> bound to proteins, helps doctors rule out cancer in
> about 25 percent of men in that questionable range.
> That means about 200,000 fewer men will have to
> undergo biopsies each year.
>
> Smoking. Away from the conference, a study
> discussed in an editorial in last week's Journal of
> the National Cancer Institute threatens to undo
> years of health education. A study of American and
> Canadian women with a particular gene that
> increases the chance of breast cancer found that
> smoking one pack of cigarettes a day for four or
> more years appears to reduce the risk of developing
> breast cancer. This doesn't mean you should
> smoke, says Paul Kleihues of the International
> Agency for Research on Cancer, in Lyon, France.
> That's playing Russian roulette with lung cancer
> and numerous other diseases. Kleihues and his
> colleagues believe smoking reduces estrogen
> production, thus slowing cancer growth. Experts
> are quick to say more studies are required.
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>This is an automatically-generated notice. If you'd like to be removed
>from the mailing list, please visit the Medicine-On-Line Discussion Forum
>at <http://www.meds.com/con_faq.html>, or send an email message to:
>majordomo@lists.meds.com
>with the subject line blank and the body of the message containing the
line:
>unsubscribe mol-cancer your-email-address
>where the phrase your-email-address is replaced with your actual email
>address.
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is an automatically-generated notice. If you'd like to be removed
from the mailing list, please visit the Medicine-On-Line Discussion Forum
at <http://www.meds.com/con_faq.html>, or send an email message to:
majordomo@lists.meds.com
with the subject line blank and the body of the message containing the line:
unsubscribe mol-cancer your-email-address
where the phrase your-email-address is replaced with your actual email
address.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
