NEW OVARIAN THERAPY

CHRISTMAS TIME, A LONG TIME AGO

Clockwise from my beautiful wife:  Daughter Karen; Linda's mother, Marion; Carolyn's younger son, Eben; Daughter Kristen; and me.

Carolyn must have taken the picture.

 

My “hits” on this blog have fallen from 40-50/day a few weeks ago to 4 yesterday and zero so far today.  Obviously I had better get cracking.  I have two subjects in mind; I will inflict one on you now & the other in a few days.

I have written several times about how our shared ignorance of cancer science worked to prevent Linda and me from finding advanced, experimental therapy, therapy that might have saved, or at least prolonged, her life.  (She did get into one “trial”, called “dose dense”.  This consisted of having chemo every two weeks instead of every three.  Big deal.)  Well, now I know lots of things that I wish I had known back then.  I just learned about another this morning.  Here it is:

http://abc30.com/health/new-treatment-turns-up-heat-on-ovarian-cancer/266317/

The article is heavy to anecdotal evidence.  It relates how one woman who was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer is still alive, and flourishing, after five years.  She was the recipient of a treatment called HIPEC, which acronym was never defined in this short article.  It consists of (1) undergoing a complete surgical “debulking”, removing the tumor and, in her case, most all the organs of the body that I have ever heard of, (2) having warm chemotherapy drugs inserted directly into her peritoneal cavity, and presumably somehow sloshed around, followed by (3) the normal course of chemo therapy.  It is working for her, and I am happy for that.  It seems to have been used successfully in several other types of cancer.  Apparently there is a phase 2 trial going on right now to test if it will help lots of other ovarian patients.

Everyone who reads this blog should keep this therapy in the back of his or her head.  It may turn out to be very important.  One hopes.

I should warn you not to click on the video that accompanies this article.  If you do, and if your experience is anything like mine, you will have to wade through some extremely annoying advertisements.