- Joined
- Aug 23, 2004
- Messages
- 1,499
Well, I finally have some good news to report! 'Bout time!
As most of you know, I have cancer, but for the last year or so, we've known that the best treatment option for me is an injectable form of radiation called Samarium. Basically, I don't respond at all to any of the chemos that might have worked, but we've found that I respond well to radiation. The problem with radiation, though, is that it's a very localized treatment--i.e., good for "spot treatment." With me, though, the cancer's in a lot of places, and the best option would be some systemic treatment that treats everything at once.
Enter Samarium. It's an injectable form of radiation that goes everywhere throughout your body but only settles in bones, and especially bone cancers, minimizing collateral damage to surrounding tissue. For me, this would be ideal because my disease is all bone-based, and this would get it everywhere at once.
The only downside is that it would kill all my bone marrow, so we have to "harvest" my stem cells ahead of time. After we have bone marrow stem cells out, we could do the treatment, wait for my blood counts to start to crash, and then re-infuse my stem cells, saving my bone marrow and bringing me back to normal. Pretty cool, huh?
Only catch was that I couldn't get my stem cells out. They just wouldn't mobilize properly with the normal drugs, and we thought that after failing to collect twice, this whole option was probably shot.
Then, this last week, we decided to try a non-FDA-approved trial drug as a last-ditch effort. We hoped that it might help enough to collect just barely enough over about a week. The results stunned us:
In one single day, I got about twice what they expected to get in the week, exceeding the most optimistic goals that my doctors had set. In a single day with the new drug, called AMD 3100, I got more stem cells out than we thought possible. Man, when I tell you we were ecstatic, you had better believe it!
So now, I finally have my first good medical news in a really long time. We got the stem cells, so now I can go ahead and try the Samarium. No matter how this goes from here, it feels great to finally be in a position to pursue something really promising--to finally have a plan of attack, not just defense. I couldn't be happier!
Thanks to you all for your smoke and prayers in recent months and years. They've finally paid off, and I can't tell you how much it means. Thank you all for your support, and I wish you all the best in the new year. You are all in my thoughts and prayers.
As I head off in this new direction, I've been told that it'll be some of the toughest I've had to face yet, but I'm just thrilled. It's been so long since I've been able to actively pursue a good offensive option that I'm just about giddy. I guess I'll ask for your continued smoke and prayers, because I know that they work, and I could probably use the good vibes. But most of all, I just want to say again: Thank you all. This place is great.
Thanks to all, and my best wishes to you and yours,
Chris
As most of you know, I have cancer, but for the last year or so, we've known that the best treatment option for me is an injectable form of radiation called Samarium. Basically, I don't respond at all to any of the chemos that might have worked, but we've found that I respond well to radiation. The problem with radiation, though, is that it's a very localized treatment--i.e., good for "spot treatment." With me, though, the cancer's in a lot of places, and the best option would be some systemic treatment that treats everything at once.
Enter Samarium. It's an injectable form of radiation that goes everywhere throughout your body but only settles in bones, and especially bone cancers, minimizing collateral damage to surrounding tissue. For me, this would be ideal because my disease is all bone-based, and this would get it everywhere at once.
The only downside is that it would kill all my bone marrow, so we have to "harvest" my stem cells ahead of time. After we have bone marrow stem cells out, we could do the treatment, wait for my blood counts to start to crash, and then re-infuse my stem cells, saving my bone marrow and bringing me back to normal. Pretty cool, huh?
Only catch was that I couldn't get my stem cells out. They just wouldn't mobilize properly with the normal drugs, and we thought that after failing to collect twice, this whole option was probably shot.
Then, this last week, we decided to try a non-FDA-approved trial drug as a last-ditch effort. We hoped that it might help enough to collect just barely enough over about a week. The results stunned us:
In one single day, I got about twice what they expected to get in the week, exceeding the most optimistic goals that my doctors had set. In a single day with the new drug, called AMD 3100, I got more stem cells out than we thought possible. Man, when I tell you we were ecstatic, you had better believe it!
So now, I finally have my first good medical news in a really long time. We got the stem cells, so now I can go ahead and try the Samarium. No matter how this goes from here, it feels great to finally be in a position to pursue something really promising--to finally have a plan of attack, not just defense. I couldn't be happier!
Thanks to you all for your smoke and prayers in recent months and years. They've finally paid off, and I can't tell you how much it means. Thank you all for your support, and I wish you all the best in the new year. You are all in my thoughts and prayers.
As I head off in this new direction, I've been told that it'll be some of the toughest I've had to face yet, but I'm just thrilled. It's been so long since I've been able to actively pursue a good offensive option that I'm just about giddy. I guess I'll ask for your continued smoke and prayers, because I know that they work, and I could probably use the good vibes. But most of all, I just want to say again: Thank you all. This place is great.
Thanks to all, and my best wishes to you and yours,
Chris
