Why I’m doing what I’m doing
This article I’m pasting below came into my inbox today from a newsletter that I receive from the National Brain Tumor Society. Temodar is the chemotherapy that I am currently taking. It’s quite disturbing for me to read things like this, but it makes me even more confident that pursuing multiple ways to kill this tumor is a good idea. Check it out.
THURSDAY, March 5 (HealthDay News) — Temozolomide (Temodar), a standard treatment for brain cancer, may boost the aggressiveness of surviving cancer cells, making tumor recurrence more likely, a new study suggests.The research team, from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, have identified cells in brain tumors called gliomas that have stem cell-like qualities and are able to survive chemotherapy with the help of a particular protein. These surviving cells become drug-resistant, and may be the reason treatment for brain cancer is usually unsuccessful.
The researchers isolated cells from mice and human cancer brain tumors called glioblastomas. Some of these cells appeared to have the ability to renew themselves and resist chemotherapy, the team found, and ABCG2 appears to be a marker for these resistant cells.
Holland’s group also identified how the protein helps tumor cells expel chemotherapy drugs.
“Current treatment for gliomas works for a while and then usually fails,” Holland said. “These findings might be partly the reason for that. There is more than one cell type in these tumors, and they respond differently to the therapy we treat people with.”
For example, the chemotherapy drug temozolomide — which is the standard treatment for gliomas — actually increased the number of drug-resistant cells. Because temozolomide doesn’t target ABCG2, it may render surviving cells more resistant to treatments that do target the ABCG2 protein, Holland theorized.
“Life is complicated; brain tumors are complicated, too,” he said.
Dr. Ronald Benveniste is an assistant professor of neurosurgery at the University of Miami School of Medicine. He believes the study has a real upside because it points to new, longer-lasting brain cancer treatments.
“Clinically, what we see with patients with glioblastoma is that after surgery, radiation and chemotherapy with temozolomide, they live longer and a subset of them will actually live a year, two years or even longer. And then pretty much 100% of the patients relapse and no one knows why,” Benveniste said.
This study identifies the mechanism by which this happens, he said. “When you treat mice with temozolomide they develop recurrent diseases even quicker, so temozolomide make the cells that survive act in a more aggressive manner,” Benveniste said.
This and That
Wow. It’s been awhile, eh? So busy with so many random things going on. Here’s the rundown.
On the health front, I’m starting my second round of chemo on Sunday night, which will go for 5 days. The first round was definitely a learning curve of what and what not to do. Hopefully I can implement the things that I learned to make this a more pleasant experience. An oxymoron for sure, chemo and pleasant, but it could definitely be worse than it is.
I am contuining to do my natural IV treatment in between the chemo rounds. It feels so good to be constantly attacking this thing, rather than take chemo, but then take 23 days off of anything. I’m feeling great, other than some focal seizures every now and then. Thankfully, I am now 3 months past my last grand mal seizure, so only 3 more months until I can drive legally. Woohoo! Next scan will be May 3rd. With everything that I am now doing, we are believing for some response in the tumor. God willing that it disappears.
Other than all of that boring health rot, things are busy here on the dairy. We are building a new parlor, which is nearing completion. It will be so lovely when my husband can come home and not be interrupted by 10 phone calls about the parlor, right when he walks in the door. It looks amazing, and definitely dresses up the dairy. We will then be able to milk the cows 3 times a day, rather than 2, so that will definitely help off-set the irritatingly low milk prices. This is why you can go to the store and buy Yoplait yogurt for $.50, rather than $.80 right now. As you would guess, we are conflicted about this issue. Cheaper grocery bills are always a good thing.
Other than that, we’ve actually been able to get out and do some fun stuff. Marvin and I went to the Dierks Bentley/Brad Paisley concert. Can I just say that BP is a brilliant guitar player and song writer? He is always a great concert, and we happened to have snagged great seats, right at the end of the middle catwalk. Loved that. We also went to an exciting Blazer game with some friends this past Wednesday, also sin el niños. It has been so nice to pull my husband away from the dairy without kids.
We’ve been inundated with family here for the past couple of weeks. Marvin’s nephew came and stayed with us for a week, followed by his entire family coming, followed by my parents now being here. It’s definitely a lot of family in a small window, but it’s been great. My nephew took 3rd place in the state wrestling championships. Yeah, he’s a stallion. It’s so lovely having my parents here, which equates to cheap in-house babysitters. And my parents are always a good time. With them around, it somewhat allows me to indulge my denial that I’m now the mature parent. Errrr…. parent, and not the kid.
So there’s the Hesse household in a blogshell. Not too exciting, but we’re trying to work on at least throwing some fun excitement in our lives, rather than all of this silly medical drama all the time…
Your constant phone calls, emails, cards, comments on FB and MS are so appreciated. We really are doing well, thanks to so many prayers and love from people around us. So thank you from the very bottom of our hearts.
