Re: its back
 

Donna, hang in there. When I was going through chemo, Imodium was like eating candy - did nothing for the runs. Ask your doc for a prescription for lomotil - it is a controlled substance but works way better than imodium. Drink lots of gatorade and water.

xoxo
janis

Re: its back
 

Hi Donna,

I was just checking in and wanted to check in on you. I hope you are handling treatments well.

Re: its back
 

Hi All-
I finished 5 chemo cycles. Onc decided against the 6th. I was incredibly sick after treatment 5. I will continue with herceptin and perjeta every 3 weeks. I need to see a surgeon about possible direct to liver chemo treatment. The largest liver tumor wasn't affected by chemo. My last pet scan results were overall good - nothing new, nothing larger than before. But I still have active disease. The liver tumor is the onc's biggest area of concern. I suggested cutting off the bad part. Guess that isn't an option. I have surgery next Thursday - I have paralyzed vocal cord, most likely a result of the cancer affecting the nerve. The vocal cord wont be fixed, instead it will be pushed over (to the middle) so the working cord will be able to reach it and apparently that is what makes voice. Who knew? It's been since mid February so I am really looking forward to getting my voice back.

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Donna

I read something just now about local radiation therapy to the liver for breast cancer to liver mets. Is this a possible option for you?. It has been used with some effectiveness it seems.


Paul

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Hi Paul-
Yes, my oncologist mentioned radiation pellets into the liver as another option. Im glad I have options still.

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Donna

Radiation does sound like a possibility. Like anything with cancer it is somewhat of a crap shoot. Some patients respond extremely well others dont.

This may sound crazy but Ive been thinking this way so lo ng Ive long " losyt my rocker " and cant tell the difference anymore. There is something in cancer called the copper zinc ratio. If you were to take a blood test and get the results for copper and zinc blood level (I think it is measured in microgram %) you probably would have a copper zinc ratio of 1.5 or higher. With cancer the copper levels rise and the zinc levels drop. Look up the copper/zinc ratio for yourself. I always wondered if normalizing it by taking zinc supplements and raising the zinc blood level would be helpful in a adjunct to treating or even preventing cancer as this would lower the copper/zinc ratio.

I worked as a pharmacist 43 years ago at a big cancer hospital and it was
an experience. For years I had a cancer "scare" I wont go as far as to say phobia. Ill take it shorter than I want. I have benn taking zinc supplements (my Dr. knows; she shrugs her shoulders) as a possible cancer preventitive and raided my ratio to a good level. Will this be a preventitive? Who knows. It cold make the situation worse. The slow pace of progress with cancer has made me shrug my shoulders. As a treatment for cancer making things worse
is possible. Very possible. Cancer cells use zinc also as a cofactor for enzymes etc. If you find yourself interested you can discuss this with your oncologist. Dont self medicate with over the counter zinc.

Paul

Forgive any misspellings

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Let me add something to the above post. I wrote it when I was rushed and a bit tired. Thee was an experiment where about 100 women with breast lumps were biopsied. I think about 22 of the women had lumps that were malignant. As stated before, these women tended to have the highest copper/zinc ratio. From what I remember, you could diagnose which of the lumps ere malignant, just by considering the CU/ZN ratio with over 90% accuracy.

What about the benign lumps. If you examine sections of these lumps under the microscope, some of the fibrocystic breast cells looked like normal breast cells. Others had larger nucleuses and abnormal shapes. The same basic thing. The more abnormal the cell morphology of the benign lumps, the higher the Cu/Zn ratio also with close to 90% specificity. Apparently you could diagnose fibrocystic cells also simply with a blood test and determining the copper/Zinc ratio. To me this was fascinating. Ill try to relocate this article. I read it years ago. I think this is when I started thinking about using zinc supplements to lower the Cu/Zn ratio and possibly prevent or even help treat cancer. This is exactly how medical discoveries were made in the 1800s,

Paul

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Let me add one more thing about the copper/zinc ratio and thats it. For one thing it may be the ratio that is important not the actual concentration of either zinc or copper. This has nothing to do with Copper reduction to prevent angiogenesis using the copper chelator, Ammonium Tetrathiomolybdate.

You can have physiologically normal concentrations of both copper and zinc (Its is a range of numbers not a single one) and still have a "bad" ie "cancerous" copper zinc ratio. This abnormally high Cu/Zinc is seen in many kinds of cancer, even in Leukemias.
People in the last stages of cancer often have CU/Zn ratios of over 2. Usually the copper level increases and the zinc level decreases. There are exceptions where only the copper level rises but this is not the rule.

It appears that good zinc levels encourage apoptosis and inhibit cancer proliferation and spread. Think of microbiology. A certain bacterium will need maltose to grow in the culture, another proprionic acid, while another one will need fructose. Possibly (very unlikely I admit} cancer thrives when the blood has a high copper/zinc ratio. To me this kind of possible treatment might have a beneficial effect, ie giving zinc supplements to lower the copper zinc ratio by raising the serum zinc level. Stranger things have happened.

Unfortunately cancer has become a big industry. I firmly believe any real advances are going to come from the "peanut gallery" not from the pharmacologists at Pfizer or Novartis. Please forgive any misspellings

Paul