[Sherryg683]

My brother is being treated at MD Anderson in Houston, for his stage IV melanoma. His has almost taken over his liver and all in his bones. They are doing a 5 chemo mixture on him, his nurse said it was the strongest, hardest dose of chemo that there is. I know 3 of the drugs are Interferon, Interluekine (sp?) and carboplatin..don't know the other 2. He has to be in the hospital for 5 days of continuous treatment, then monitored for 2 more and sent home for 2 weeks. He will do 6 of these rounds, if they don't kill him with the treatments. He looked horrible when we picked him up last week, swollen from fluid. He had only eaten a bowl of soup and some light snacks in 12 days. MD Anderson said they have a 65 percent rate of this shrinking the tumors in half, and a 20 percent rate of them being totally gone. They said they have had patients in this last category that have lived 10 years. So there is always hope. What your brother in law is on is what they did to my brother when he was first diagnosed. He was stage I at diagnosis. The next scan after the year that the interferon alone was stopped, it showed up in his liver. My advise is to get him where there is melanoma specialists. It's an awful cancer to have but it looks like they have made a little headway...sherryg