Yvonne, one of my readers, sent me encouraging messages about my sore mouth after just one dose of gemcitabine.  She wrote: "I feel your pain!!! ...In fact, I am rinsing along with you this week!!" Now, it is really true that misery loves company, and I felt better knowing that I was...

I had a question from a reader about my chemo schedule, and I agree, it's hard to understand. So I thought I'd try to outline it here, briefly. (Well, maybe not so briefly...) I'm not on any kind of standard regimen--Tykerb is normally given with xeloda, for example, but I can't tole...

I stuck out my tongue in front of the mirror yesterday morning, and what did I see? Red sore patches, with whitish borders. My tongue looks like someone beat it up, and that's how it feels, too.  So, being no dummy, I called my oncologist's office and talked to one of his nurses. She a...

Dr. Laurance Johnston's review of How to Overcome Your Health Problems by Brent Atwater Dr Laurance Johnston : Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from Northwestern University. Laurance Johnston became a FDA regulatory scientist, a NIH division director, and director of the Spinal Cord Resea...

On Friday, I'm scheduled to get my first treatment with the new regimen, which will include gemcitabine (brand name: Gemzar). That is, if I decide to do this new plan, which will be my old friends Herceptin, zometa, and Tykerb, plus the gemcitabine in place of cytoxan. (It's a wonder I don&#...

So, since updating my situation things have moved. I have had bowel clearence THREE times since leaving the hospital, and I have had 4 16 oz glasses of water. So I pee every five minutes. After making my update I called the Hospital and asked some questions. I asked this guy that they connected me t...

Okay so I am really pissed off right now and it's only 7:30am. I went to have my body scan at 6:30. I was there in plenty of time like I was suposed to be, and as usual the damn hospital was running late. Not really what I'm pissed about but anyway. So I go in for my body scan and after it's over I ...

In case you haven't been paying attention to the weather in Seattle (and why should you?), we have been having a heat wave. A "heat wave" by Seattle standards means temperatures in the high 80s, which melts Seattleites right down to their Tevas. (A perfect day in Seattle is 72--cool enough to play t...

P52 gene, arrows show locations of common mutations  (Image courtesy www.bioinf.org ) Following on from my last article on using gene therapy for increasing survival in head and neck cancer, Professor Jack Roth, M.D., professor in M. D. Anderson’s Department of Thoracic & Cardiovascular ...

Thank you to Jennifer Texada at MD Anderson for bringing this great cancer treatment discovery to my attention…. (Image courtesy Introgen Therapeutics) A gene therapy invented at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center is the first to succeed in a U.S. phase III clinical trial fo...