Second Opinion

Hopefully the Phillies will still be playing by next Friday. Friday we'll be in Philly hoping to hit a big homerun.

The appointment with the specialist at the University of Pennsylvania has been set. We're keeping our fingers crossed that he may have greater access to new therapies for kidney cancer, or possibly access to a clinical trial, or something. The cancer center at U of P is a big dog in the medical world of cancer. We'll know next Friday.

There is basically four chemotherapies currently available for kidney cancer. All are fairly similar in make-up, and in how they work. Once the first chemo became available, many other drug companies tried to jump on the bandwagon. There is a lot of money to be made in cancer care. These mediciations alone cost $5,000 to $8,000 a month.

I've been trying to get into my oncologist's head and figure out what he is thinking. I believe that he feels that I've been on all four available chemos and yet I'm still pretty messed up. I think that he feels if he started me on one of the chemos again that was previously used that we'd see little or no benefits while the side-effects of the chemo contiue to beat me up.

The oncologist has often talked about his responsibility to attack my cancer but also to protect the quality of my life. So, crawliing around his brain a little, I'm trying to sort out his decision process.

But I am a fighter. I have put myself through a lot to even make it this far. I have a difficult time accepting his decision to just stop treatments. I just keep thinking, what great harm could really come from trying Nexavar again? It was the first chemo I was put on and I got 14-months out of it before it stopped working.

The doc hasn't completely given up. He did start me on Interferon which is not a chemo but a strong immune system booster. It strengthens and convinces your own immune system into ridding the body of everything that doesn't belong there. He told Barb and I that he's seen it completely clear-up a lung cancer patient whose lungs were filled with tumors. But he added that it really only works about 15-percent of the time.

I am still having radiation treatments to my upper spine where cancer has invaded one of my vertabrae. I also am likely to be scheduled for another Gamma Knife to remove two very small growths in my brain.

In the meantime, we're looking, we're asking, we're researching, we're fighting. Let's go!