wiesia

I also share your frustration. My mother is a six year breast cancer survivar and when she got sick there was so many places and very active message boards I could go to for information and support. When my father was sick the situation was completely different. One obvious aspect is the dismal prognosis. People with lung cancer live for such a short time and waste away so fast that you just do not see many survivors fighting for lung cancer research, funding, etc. It is all up to the families it seems.

O Gosh ! I am schocked to hear that and so very very sorry. I hate this disease !

Amanda, I will be hoping for a quick recovery from the pneumonia.

I will be hoping for the best news !

It looks like Karen had only one type of chemo (besides Tarceva). There are plenty more. The usual second line chemos are: taxotere, alimta, navelbine. The first two are stronger; the last one has minimal side effects.

My parents live on the outskirts of the city where many of the city gardens are located. You see those all over Europe: tiny parcels of land where people grow flowers and vegetables and have a tiny house to spend their summer evenings around away from the city noise. As a result there are zillions of wild cats around. My mother was taking care of some 20-30 of them for the last twenty years. My father built them a house. This is an extension of our house so it has heat and water. They spent their winter in that house. Wild cats, even vacinated, are so prone to diseases, accidents that it is unbelievable. So death is a constant companion. Cats, when they are sick, just get depressed, more and more. They withdraw, hide somewhere, get quiet, and one day they are just gone. I always thought that the nature told them to give up. Not to accept it but to give up: since cure was so unlikely, death had to come. Terribly sad.

Barb, I have seen him promoting that book as well. He says that our spirit=mind=thought="who knows what" lives on. I wonder about that. There is a fellow who appeared on larry king once and people were calling with names of relatives who passed. He was able to see them and to report some messages from them. I found it interesting because the messages were too much for a coincidence. A father told a son that they have put a wrong brand of cigarettes into his coffin. How can this be a coincidence ? The fellow says that he knows nothing of the other world or of what he sees. He does not understand in what sense the people he sees are alive. Perhaps they do live on independantly in our thoughts ? I have found it really thought provoking. More so than any religious belief I know of.

I am so sorry Heather.

I am not religious (but raised Catholic). And I have no idea whether any type of "us" survives after our body is gone. My best guess at the moment would be "no". And it really bothers me. Thinking that my father, all he was, is gone forever and ever is unbearable. My best friend died last fall; just before my father was found to have lung cancer. She died from pancreatic cancer, only seven weeks after the diagnosis. She was not religious either (raised Mormon). She was not afraid of death, just angry that she was dying at 64. Just before her death she said: "I am confident that there is something waiting for me beyond an emptiness". I thought it strange. But ...

Nicole, I am terribly sorry.

Did they check whether there is a tumor/enlarged lymph nodes in the mediastinum ? Those can constrict trachea and the main bronchus. Also, a tumor might be inside the airway. I am not sure that that would show up on an x-ray. At the end my father could not breath. I still can not believe that he is gone: his scans showed tumors in the lungs but there was plenty of lungs left to breath. I do believe that there was an obstruction in some airway that they did not find. But who knows...it is a terrible disease and maybe his shortness of breath was caused by something we just could not eaily see.

Rochelle, Mets to shin are not common. And it is good that x-ray came out ok. But I wanted to make a remark here that some women made to me some months ago and it really helped my mother. Generally, bone mets are not going to show on x-ray unless there is already a 50% or more destruction of the bone. We have seen it ourselves. That is my mother found out that last september that her PET scan lit up on one rib (she had breat cancer five years before that). SUV was 3. Her onc ordered x-ray. It showed nothing and my mother was so happy. Well... when women at the breast cancer support group told me to get MRI or bone scan we did. And it turned out that her rib is actually quite damaged from cancer. Good news is that we are able to control it with femara. But rib is a common site for met but shin is not...

Heather, I am so sorry to hear that.

I have read those studies as well. It was on cisplatine and astragalus. They sounded very encouraging. Astragalus has also activity for breast cancer (plus chemo). My mother is taking it (with femara). My father was also taking it during his chemo.

PCI is given routinely for small cell; as a preventive.

heights: I got stuck once heigh up on a Majan pyramid and would not move; after a while I went down on my butt; tight spaces: like ventillator shafts in the remake of "Poseidon"; ughhh

My father had a similar problem. In his case it was the lymph nodes in between the lungs that were constricting the esophagus. His oncologist was hoping that chemo will get rid of that problem but unfortunately chemo worked on lungs but not on lymph nodes (they kept growing). I think it is a good idea to put a stent in (and it is a minor procedure) but it is also a good idea to check whether the tumor is not constricting the trachea and main bronchi. Those problems often go together.

I am so sorry Sonia.

I am so sorry to hear what is happening. Me too, I hope that you have or can find someone to help you.

When my father needed Avastin we had to buy it ourselves (around 4000$ a cycle). The same would have been with Tarceva. Both are approved in EC but whether each individual countrie's health care system pays for it is a different matter. Polish budget can simply not afford it. It seems that even rich countries (like England) are deciding that their budget can not afford it. I do not think that this is a problem of socialized medicine. If we keep thinking like that we could easily miss what is going on at home (that is in US). I have a great health care insurance here and if I need Avastin I would get it but ... in the last two years my drug deductible grew from 5% to 25%. 25% of Avastin is still a lot of money ! And what about the 25% or so of people in US who do not have insurance. What happens to them if they need such drugs ? I know that many go without expensive medicine like Imitrex because at 4$ a pill (without insurance) they just can not afford it. In England everyone is insured. If they were to "uninsure" 25% of their population their budget just might afford Tarceva. The new drugs are just too expensive. Period. For practically any country. Futurists argue that with this "new" medicine we are approaching times when there will be two kinds of people: those with tons of money living 150 years and those with little money living 50 years. Scary thought, no ? But, it seems to me, very realistic.

I am so sorry to hear that Missy.

Yes, what I read recently is that they advice to elevate it to only 12 or slightly above and no more if possible. I do not remember what the problems were for higher levels. Dog tired ? Not really. Mostly notice that I can not exercise as long and as easily as others. But I also have a very low blood pressure (70/50, 90/60) and that is more of a problem

I just want to comment about your hemoglobin level. If I have it at 10.9 I consider myself lucky. And extremely lucky if it is above 11. Something in my family genes makes the hemoglobin levels so low. It is not a problem for me. But I could never be a professional athlete with such low levels ! I do get short of breath while exercising faster than other people.

This reminds me of times when I am really depressed and stressed. Have a lot on my plate. Then inavitably I have to unscrew one of those medicine bottles. Kid-proofed. And, of course, I can not. The simple task of unscrewing that bottle when there is so much going on in my life turns out to be too much ! I have to leave it and come back to it later. Soooo, step back and treat yourself well.

There is a lot of research on medscape (in the public domain). Most evidence I have found for NSCLC was for astragalus, PSP, and melatonin. All seem to help chemotherapy (cisplatine) act better on the tumor.