Posted on 03/16/2021 10:30:42 AM PDT by nickcarraway
The five-year survival rate for someone with stage I colon cancer is 92%. But the five-year survival rate for someone with stage IV is just 12%.
Beth McCaw-McKinney did everything right.
"She ate healthy. She exercised. She always did her breast cancer examinations, pap smears. All that was on time," said Cathy McCaw-Engelman, Beth's sister.
But then at age 53 she had her first colonoscopy.
"They found a grapefruit-sized tumor in her colon. It was already in her lymph nodes and basically had spread," McCaw-Engelman said.
Doctors gave Beth 3 months to live. She lived 3 years.
Professor Annette Khaled and her team study metastatic cancer cells and are looking to help people like Beth. Thanks to a donation from Beth’s family, they now have a new weapon in their fight against cancer: the cellsearch system.
“Cellsearch is a system that uses blood from cancer patients, and we’re able to detect circulating tumor cells," said Dr. Ana Martini, post-doctoral scientist at UCF College of Medicine.
These are cancer cells that have spread to other parts of the body. The system allows them to separate, analyze and count the number of these cells. It can detect as few as two to three cancer cells in a teaspoon of blood. With that information they can try to...
"Understand what are the steps and what are the changes that cells undergo, cancer cells undergo, from the tumor to become a circulating tumor cell," said Dr. Khaled. "[We look into] how we can develop therapies to inhibit or prevent these circulating tumor cells."
And stop the spread of cancer in its tracks.
The CellSearch technology has actually been around and FDA approved since 2004. It remains the only clinically-validated system for identification, isolation, and counting of circulating tumor cells.
Only five laboratories in the world have the technology, but it is used for several other types of cancer as well.
I just lost my mother to cancer last October.
Cancer sucks!
I’m sorry to hear that.
"Healthy" is subjective. She may have been genetically predisposed so what she considered healthy wasn't healthy enough.
Sorry to hear of your loss. This scourge will be eradicated some day. Not an easy battle but we are inching closer to it.
Mine in 2014. It was drawn out but she was a trooper to the end.
I was never so impressed with any one in my life. I should show as much character and strength.
BTW -I think of this. Liberal nitwits, right now (and with ALL the cards in their favor), whine more than a 91 year old woman facing the end of her battle for life.
God bless you and your mom.
Yet another diagnostic tool for cancer but still no real treatment for advanced stage cancer. Cancer doctors just keep changing the type of chemo (oxaliplatin, sysplatin, etc.) until nothing works and the immune system is wiped out. The real problem with cancer is abdominal cancers that hide until it is too late. Patients should be educated as to subtle signs of cancer for early detection. But even then most people go into denial that they have cancer anyway.
i witnessed the opposite.
drs wouldnt listen until it was too late.
i am a big proponent of ordering your own bloodwork if Drs wont listen. it will give you piece of mind or ammunition.
and if you suddenly get tinnitus..you are on your own. after reading the tinnitustalk site- which is pretty depressing...since medical profession doesnt have an answer you are just frequently left on your own to try to figure it out while listening to nonstop screeching in your ears
That is so true. People who belong in high risk categories (age, lifestyle, comorbidities ..) should go for screenings whether or not they have suspicious symptoms. Case in point - Rush. Yes he was a lifelong smoker but he had other lifestyle risk factors too - weight, diet, stress, sedentary lifestyle, autoimmune disease (that destroyed his hearing)..along with advancing age. If only he had gone for a screening in 2017 or even in 2018 involving say a low does CT scan, there is a very very good chance he would not be on the wrong side of the grass today. But he hated going to the doctor and he also had the tendency to blow off any suggestions for healthy living.
My Dad died from Cancer and it is a terrible disease, but what are your chances of Dying just because you are Alive?
Lung cancer is notoriously hard to treat, which in turn diminishes the value of early detection.
My wife, too, end of October. She had a lump removed from her breast in 2013. The surgeon told us he “got it all”. But there must have been some already circulating, as it grew in her spine and hips.
This video postulates that cancer cells that have already spread to other parts of the body are activated by the bodies healing response to removing the tumor.
The presenter proposes giving an NSAID before initial surgery.
I wish we had known this before my wife had the lumpectomy.
This likely doesn’t apply to you but for others that have it
http://kirschaudiology.com/2019/06/30/scientists-found-a-possible-cure-for-tinnutus/
Anti- tnf-a blockers are outrageously expensive (at least the ones I priced) so no Insurance company is going to approve it for tinnitus...but if you have another condition that also has a tnf-a issue..like psoriasis...perhaps it is something to try..or at least get a tnf-a bloodtest.
I am so used to it I don’t even notice it really, unless I think about it. But my case can’t be fixed, something about the dozen surgeries in each year. You do get used to it.
So sorry for your loss. Treatments have improved dramatically in even just the past 10 years, but we still lose far too many wonderful souls to this terrible disease. Hopefully at least some of us will see it eliminated within our lifetime.
You have to learn to ignore the ringing and not notice it. My left ear has a high tone ringer.
He couldn’t have been a lifelong smoker since he’s been talking about his formally nicotine stained fingers for as long as I can remember listening. Early 1990’s.
To your point, why did Rush suddenly have stage 4 cancer? Did he not have routine exams to identify this? Probably not. What a tremendous loss!
My dad was long lived but died of cancer. He was on chemo, and the doctors monitored his progress using CT scans. Yet, the PET scan was available, and from what I understand, can detract the migration of a single cancer cell. They gave him the PET scan only AFTER it had migrated. WTH! Why not give the PET scan each time!?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.