Sharon, I really feel for you, and can't imagine not keeping my wife actively involved in what's going on and what decisions need to be made. To me, the not knowing is the worst, most helpless feeling there is. There was a point in time in my treatment that I only wanted the future handed to me in s...

I'm very lucky in that my onc has been very responsive to us when we've reached out to her outside of visits (she and my wife could almost be classified as email buddies). I'm also at a hospital that has online patient access to test results, but there seem to be a lag between when the Dr. gets the ...

Something to discuss with the onc, as everyone is different, but plain water should generally be ok (if she's on oxili, room temp or a little warmer will go down easier). If there's a lot of vomiting or diareah maybe something along the lines of pedialyte or gatorade (which I personally think tastes...

Excellent article. The one thing I struggle with is the concept of "give up", and the article kind of glosses over this. The term connotates failure. And, in my view anyway, anyone who has put forth the effort to battle any disease, not just ours, and has reached the end of any therapy tha...

A guy buys a parrot and brings it home, but the parrot curses and uses language so foul even a sailor would blush. He tries to return the parrot to the store, but they store has a no return policy. Finally in a last act of desperation, he throws the parrot into the freezer. There is a lot of cursing...

I've actually had to think about this subject for a couple of days, and my wife and I sort of had a discussion around this subject last night, partially from my thinking about this thread and partially that yesterday was the 1-year anniversary of my first meeting with my oncologist, and the words &q...

Not really, because this is capitalism, pure and simple. The only thing it concerns itself with is profit, and the continuing existence of the company. If we want cancer research to reflect the common good, then we need "big government" to step in and pay for the research. Yes it is capit...

Well, if we think about this in a purely capitalistic way, you're viewing this through the eye of one pharmaceuitcal that may have a profit motive relative to an existing product. But let's take this out a bit. 1) They are starting to spend clinical research dollars on the new product, they will wan...

Although not physically with us, he remains a beautiful soul.

No, this cannot be diagnosed by laypeople over the internet. However....Like you, I had minor right side abdominal pain that persisted for 6-8 weeks or so before I went to my PC. The initial CT, as you had, suggested an odd appendix presentation and I was referred to a surgeon. The surgeon didn't th...

A fairly interesting and relevant article from Healthline.com that popped up on LinkedIn for me today:

http://www.healthline.com/health/cancer ... w-patients

I am now starting to look into trials. I will be going to MD Anderson next month and am inquiring about other trials. Obviously I would have to pay travel expenses which is not a problem but what about the trial itself. Is that cost covered by the sponsor never, some of the time, all of the time. E...

I think it's important to remember that a clinical trial is a scientific process to prove a particular endpoint or effectiveness of a drug, compound, molecule or what have you (I'll use "drug" as a generic term). As a part of that process, in order to understand how the drug behaves in hum...

One other tip that my onc provided when I was on the oxili is to suck on ice chips while the oxili is infusing. This supposedly reduces the amount of drug that gets into the blood vescles of the mouth and tongue and helps with the cold insensitivity. Since I was on the full FOLFOX over the winter, i...

Going to throw a thought in here as I work in the clinical trial industry. I work on the finance side of a Contract Research Organization (CRO), so my understanding is more to the layman side than scientific. And I tend to be more familiar with the pharma/biotech sponsored trials than the academic o...