Update on my Mom

[CodeJockey]

Well, my mom had surgery yesterday to remove the softball size tumor in her lung. Unfortunately the surgery didn't go well. The surgeon had warned us prior to the surgery that there were two potential barriers to removing the lung, and that they wouldn't know until they went in if they would be able to or not.

The first barrier was that if the cancer cells had spread beyond the tumor then they couldn't remove the lung. They did a PET scan prior to the surgery but it only has a resolution down to 1cm. While that didn't show any additional spreading, it didn't mean that the cancer cells couldn't have spread and not been picked up. The first step was to see if the could find any cancer cells once they went in that had spread. They did not, so that was good.

The second barrier was that the tumor was in a location that it could be removed without cutting it. The surgeon said if they had to cut the tumor then it would seed and spread like crazy, so they ahd to remove it in one piece without making any kind of incision. Unfortunately, it had grown so large that it passed out of the wall of the lung into the diaphragm. Becuase of that, they couldn't remove it.

So, that is pretty bad news given the aggressiveness of this cancer and the size of the tumor. The only treatment option left is radiation / chemo, but the oncologist had told us before the surgery that if surgery wasn't an option, that this particular strain of cancer is very, very resilient to chemo and radiation. We're waiting to hear from him on where we go from here, but mom has already stated numerous times that she has no intention of doing chemo / radiation. Anyway, it's been a long day.

Sorry for the depressing post, I just needed to vent.

[Keith B]

Will keep your Mom and family in the prayers. Everyone needs to keep their spirits up. A friend of mine is a long time Oncologist. He says there are studies that show patients who keep very positive outlooks on their treatment path and have supportive, positive family and friends do much better on their treatments than those that stay depressed and down. The human psyche can do wonders on helping the healing process. And, the prayer portion fits into that not only from a divine intervention standpoint, but the fact that the person knows there is a lot of good thoughts and words being sent to the Almighty Physician on their behalf for healing!

[flintknapper]

My prayers for your Mother and your family.

I've been in your shoes...and understand what all of you are going through.



Flint.

[RPB]

This may or may not help, look into Dallas area CYBERKNIFE (I saw your "Location: Arlington, TX)
Dallas area has about 3 machines if I recall correctly, but I don't know if they are backlogged with patients or if they even do lungs.


A Chicago cyberknife study on lung cancers on inoperable, incurable patients had a result of 100% "cure" rate after 3 years.
Although some passed from other reasons, so 86% were still alive after 3 years..

In Austin they have 1 Cyberknife machine and only use it for brain and spinal cord cancers, they are unaware or not approved for lung treatments in Austin. So, they refuse to use it for Lung cancer in Austin.

Takes about 20 minutes in a dentist type chair, non-invasive, and you go home.



Article on it here.
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Treatment ... id=3753226" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

One study here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17922973" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

RESULTS: Four patients with stage 1A NSCLC and 2 patients with stage 1B NSCLC had persistent or recurrent disease. All patients tolerated the radiosurgery well, fatigue being the main side effect. Of the 59 patients treated, 51 (86%) were still alive at 1-33-month follow-up. Eight patients have died, 2 of diseases other than cancer progression.

CONCLUSION: The results indicate that the delivery of precisely targeted ablative radiation doses with surgical precision to limited treatment volumes of lung tumors in a hypofractionated fashion is feasible and safe. Image-guided robotic stereotactic radiosurgery of lung tumors with CyberKnife(R) achieves excellent rates of local disease control with limited toxicity to surrounding tissues and, in many cases, might be curative for patients for whom surgery is not an option.

My mom passed from an "incureable" rare leukemia in 1984, and a "cure was found in 1986, I've met people who got the same type she had last year who got it in 1985 and were cured.

My dad passed from an ioperable, incureable lung cancer in 2008, but had beaten a thyroid cancer in the early 1970s.

That's one reason every computer I build runs http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; program doing cancer research with unused processor cycles. If there's millions of cycles per second ... I can't use them all typing. An unused processor cycle is a terrible thing to waste.

It's possible that only Chicago does lung, and possible that was "just a study, but it isn't approved by the FDA yet" but it can't hurt to research and ask.

you can Google "Chicago Cyberknife lung" etc etc

Prayers for you and your family going out from here too.
Seems like only yesterday I was in this same room with dad. He's got a better address now though.

[CodeJockey]

This may or may not help, look into Dallas area CYBERKNIFE (I saw your "Location: Arlington, TX)
Dallas area has about 3 machines if I recall correctly, but I don't know if they are backlogged with patients or if they even do lungs.


A Chicago cyberknife study on lung cancers on inoperable, incurable patients had a result of 100% "cure" rate after 3 years.
Although some passed from other reasons, so 86% were still alive after 3 years..

In Austin they have 1 Cyberknife machine and only use it for brain and spinal cord cancers, they are unaware or not approved for lung treatments in Austin. So, they refuse to use it for Lung cancer in Austin.

Takes about 20 minutes in a dentist type chair, non-invasive, and you go home.



Article on it here.
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Treatment ... id=3753226" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

One study here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17922973" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

RESULTS: Four patients with stage 1A NSCLC and 2 patients with stage 1B NSCLC had persistent or recurrent disease. All patients tolerated the radiosurgery well, fatigue being the main side effect. Of the 59 patients treated, 51 (86%) were still alive at 1-33-month follow-up. Eight patients have died, 2 of diseases other than cancer progression.

CONCLUSION: The results indicate that the delivery of precisely targeted ablative radiation doses with surgical precision to limited treatment volumes of lung tumors in a hypofractionated fashion is feasible and safe. Image-guided robotic stereotactic radiosurgery of lung tumors with CyberKnife(R) achieves excellent rates of local disease control with limited toxicity to surrounding tissues and, in many cases, might be curative for patients for whom surgery is not an option.

My mom passed from an "incureable" rare leukemia in 1984, and a "cure was found in 1986, I've met people who got the same type she had last year who got it in 1985 and were cured.

My dad passed from an ioperable, incureable lung cancer in 2008, but had beaten a thyroid cancer in the early 1970s.

That's one reason every computer I build runs http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; program doing cancer research with unused processor cycles. If there's millions of cycles per second ... I can't use them all typing. An unused processor cycle is a terrible thing to waste.

It's possible that only Chicago does lung, and possible that was "just a study, but it isn't approved by the FDA yet" but it can't hurt to research and ask.

you can Google "Chicago Cyberknife lung" etc etc

Prayers for you and your family going out from here too.
Seems like only yesterday I was in this same room with dad. He's got a better address now though.

Thanks very much for the information. I read those two articles, and I will definitely research this some more. I'm also going to start looking into MD Anderson. Surgery was her absolute best chance since it seemed to be localized to just the tumor, but since traditional surgery isn't an option, we'll definitely begin exploring more solutions.

Thanks everyone for the thoughts / prayers.

[RPB]

Oddly, there is no cyberknife in Houston (MD Anderson) [when I checked in 2008] yet Dallas has several.

I wish that FDA or whoever actually allowed and that Doctors kept up with technology that works, but that one-time 20 minute treatment (cure) would really decrease the pharmaceutical companies and surgeons and hospitals' profits.

Oh and I think I linked to a Florida success study above, but the Chicago one was as good. It may be that it's still in "testing/study stage," and if you get in on the study you get cured, but may not be approved for actual use yet still ... I dunno.
I imagine pharmaceutical companies will fight it or FDA will not decide on it for a long time or something.

Meanwhile .. create good memories while you can be together.

[CodeJockey]

Well, we talked to the oncologist. Basically, they said that she's definitely stage 4. If she decides to undergo chemo / radiation, and it's effective (which is not likely given the type of cancer), then she might have a year or a few months more than that. If she chooses not to undergo chemo / radiation, then she's looking at 6 months, at best. I had to tell my kids, and that was probably the worst part so far. They didn't take it very well.

[Divided Attention]

Prayers for you and yours!

[Lumberjack98]

Thanks for the update.

Prayers for your Mom, you and all those touched by this.