Need Suggestions on Another Type of Cancer

Hey all.........I have a friend who was diagnosed with Stage IV Ovarian Cancer a year ago. She underwent surgery, followed by chemotherapy. She also followed a strict diet with accompanying supplements. In November '10, she was told by oncologists they could find no trace of cancer, but that it could very well return, as Stage 4 Ovarian often does. And it has-----her doctor has told her that she has appox. 18 months to live. She is not one to take this news lying down. She immediately faxed her records to Fox Chase, MSK & Johns Hopkins for consults. I have kept her apprised of the knowledge and support I have received via this forum, but there is no OC site on HW. I briefly searched online last night for comparable sites, but can't really find any. Stage 4 OC doesn't have many survivors, but there are some who have, and are keeping the disease at bay. She was treated here locally at the Helen Graham Cancer Center in Delaware  Do any of you have any ideas where we could turn to find the info that the conventional medical community won't/can't give her? You know; the kind one often finds here

Thanks, Arnie

Steve.........I did. But what I was able to view last night was pretty much moral support and almost no info related to alternative medicine, clinical trials (other than Avastin) or survivors who had done this/that/whatever to get on top of their disease. I intend to do more searches. Just found out this info late last night, so I haven't poured myself into the search. Thanks for your sentiments, I appreciate it.

Arnie in DE

Arnie,

Here is a link to Sloan Kettering's Ovarian Cancer Clinical Trials site. There might be something that applies.
Jeff

Thanks guys.....Mel, we talked about MD Anderson last night and she is willing to go/consult there as well. She did the immediate thing with Fox Chase, MSK, and Hopkins because they're all within easy driving distance from here. By "alternative medicine" I meant any adjunct therapies like the kind we bat back & forth here (the green teas, the POM extract etc.) in addition to traditional treatments. But when your staring down the barrel, she's not ruling out trying anything.

Jeff, Thanks for the link......I'll check it out and pass it on to her.

David, thanks for the thoughts. Any and all help at this point is welcome------she's only 51, recently divorced, had to give up her job as a self-employed massage therapist once she started chemo becasue she didn't have the strength.

Arnie

Sorry to hear about your friend; this sound very similar to what my wife is going through with her kidney cancer (she also went through surgical de-bulking this summer, and is now on chemo).

Ovarian cancer (OC), like kidney cancer, is often diagnosed in advanced stages...people are asymptomatic at early stages. As you probably know, if she was previously assessed at stage-4, this means her OC had spread to her lungs or liver, or other vital organ...once it gets there, it's exteremely rare to beat it (which is why they call stage-4 OC, and many stage-4 cancers, "incurable"...I've heard it stated that the primary goal of earlier-staged cancers is to do everything you can to avoid stage-4).

If she's in relatively good shape physically, there are things she can do to help her tolerate the chemo better. There is, of course, a distribution curve which describes the eventual outcomes. She should focus on things which push her to the right-hand side of this curve.

Arnie, you can likely find this book on the shelves at the local Barnes & Noble, as it is a bestseller. A gift of love...

Yup. It's incredible how much I've learned about yet another topic I wanted to know nothing about...
Interestingly, my learnings & understanding here have been helpful over there in several areas.

As a tangible example, Zometa (zoledronate acid) is one of the three chemo simultaneous regimens my wife is on. I had learned a lot about Zometa at another PC forum since PC and KC both have an affinity for the bones (not so for OC, as I understand it). It was at my prompting that her oncologist added it to her program probably a littler sooner than he would have otherwise. Prior to her next appointment, we are going to email him about the possibility of switching from Zometa to Denosumab, which I first read about in PC studies as having better results than Zometa (which is considered the current "gold standard" for bone mets).

I think that you will also find some degrees of commonality...