taylorjm
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This is correct. Unfortunately, until a pharmaceutical company can either patient Cannabis, synthesize it, or somehow make money off it, there will never be a study that the medical community will deem sufficient to prove it can treat cancer. Cancer is also a huge money maker. The drug companies have no intention to cure a disease they make billions if not trillions of dollars on treating.
Oh, sorry I missed part of your question. I don’t believe they can tell for sure from the biopsy that she was in fact exposed to the thorotrast. What they found was two particular genetic markers for her tumor, that are also found in patients that have been exposed to thorotrast. But they can’t confirm that’s her case. They are just saying it’s a possibility.
Well what I found was that thorotrast was used widely in x-rays in the 30’s and 40’s. Once it’s injected, it has a half life of about 22 years. So it’s blasting your organs with radiation for about 30 years worth. With my MIL, they found genetic markers and mutations that must somehow be related to the same ones found in thorotrast exposed patients. I’m not aware of any changes to treatment because of these markers because they actually did the chemo for 6 months, and during her 3 month break, we brought up that the oncologist had mentioned sending a biopsy slide for genetic testing. That was when they found they didn’t get enough from the original biopsy when testing for cancer, so they had to do another one to get more material. The main reason they wanted it done was to see if there’s any clinical trials she may be eligible for based on the genetic makeup. But what we found with all the clinical trials happening near us, you have to have exhausted all possible resources and your cancer is still getting worse, so the clinical trials are basically a last ditch effort. She has been getting better so she won’t qualify for any clinical trials, but the dr did say there’s a newer fda approved drug out that’s for leukemia with the same genetic markers as her tumor, but it hasn’t been tried on a solid mass tumor yet. He said if they do need to start treatment, he doesn’t think it would be a problem to try the leukemia drug and see what effect it has. I don’t know the specifics, my wife went to the dr appt with her mother and didn’t think to even ask the name of the drug.
Yup, do a search for cannabis oil and you’ll get all kinds of info on it. My mother in law was taking it for 6 months while on chemo, and hasn’t been on any treatment except the cannabis for the past 6 months because everything was stable. Make sure you get the high thc oil, not the cbd. The cbd is used for pain and nausea to treat the side effects of chemo and cancer. The high thc oil is the one that claims to kill the cancer.
I’m going to disagree with the thc/cbd ratio discussed here. My research shows that the cannabis oil needs the thc levels to be over 90% for it to be effective against cancer. My mil had 6 months of gem/cis chemo, showed a huge reduction in the size of the tumors, and now has gone the past 6 months without any kind of therapy except the cannabis oil. She’s only taking a little more than a maintenance dose, about 4 grams a month, but for the past 6 months, it has remained stable and hasn’t gotten worse, so they aren’t going to start any new therapy until it changes for the worse. She is getting the oil made with girl scout cookie, which is already about 28% thc.
Wow. $1200/3 grams? $400 a gram? Wow. I’m getting it for my MIL from a neighbor that’s a caregiver at $30/gram. And this is the high THC strain, not the CBD stuff you can buy online. We just bought a second 30 gram dosage that should last a few months for $800.
If the oil had you tripping out then it must be a higher thc oil, which is good, but you would need to take enough to get past the tripping and it will knock you out. Once you get to that amount, keep it there for a couple months. You may sleep constantly for the first few days, but then it will stop. The tripping out will stop too. After 60 days, you can go down to a much lower maintenance dose. Highly recommended. My MIL is 75 and is also inoperable and according to the doctors, she should be dead by now. She has no symptoms, no pain, liver is fully functioning and the tumors are shrinking fast.
Right now my MIL is on a 3 month break from the first 6 months of being on gem/cis chemo. She had a bought of the flu so she didn’t take the cannibis oil capsules for a couple weeks. She’s going to have another cat scan at the end of February to see what has happened in the last 3 months, then determine if there’s a next phase of treatment. So far, the results are fantastic, but we will see in a month. One thing to mention, people talk about taking cannabis for pain and inflammation, or to help with the side effects of chemo. There’s two types of cannabis and it depends on the strain the oil is made from. The most common you hear of it the CBD oil. That’s for pain, nausea, etc. You shouldn’t feel the psychotropic effects from that. That’s the type that most doctors will tell you are fine and you can take it. The other strain is from the sativa strains of the plants. That’s the one Rick Simpson made famous. It’s very high THC. It won’t help with pain or nausea, but many have reported that it cures the cancer. That’s the one that doctors say are rubbish, there’s no such thing, blah, blah. Well what do you expect them to say? Do you have any clue how much money is made treating cancer in the US? There will never be a cure for cancer made by a pharmaceutical company. They aren’t in the business to cure one of the most profitable diseases in the world. Have you read about how numerous doctors that have been using cannabis to cure cancers, and are starting to publish papers have ended up dead in the past year? Google how many holistic doctors have died of “suspicious” circumstances. In the case of my MIL, she is taking the high THC, sativa strain. It give some psychotropic effects but she takes it at night and sleeps it off. Her inoperable, incurable cancer that she had only 8 months to live, is now in month 10. 75% of it has mysteriously disappeared. The doctors hoped to just stop it from getting any worse, and have no explanation as to why it’s getting better. In total, the 8 months of cannabis cost about $1500. So even if it didn’t work, it’s not like we were out a bunch of money. Now that I said this, if I end up “mysteriously” dying tomorrow, you’ll know why! Good luck!
There’s one thing you haven’t mentioned, and I don’t know how it’s treated in your area of the world. Have you looked at cannabis oil?
I found the same information Mary. Her primary dr kept saying that he personally prefers ct scans to monitor progress. He also said she would not ever be a candidate for surgery. Must be an underlying reason. He also said in these cases he doesn’t find Y90 to be successful because more than one blood source is feeding the tumors and you end up damaging live tissue as well. But again, he said that’s his preference but if we wanted to pursue it he would still support it.
In Michigan, there’s a group of traveling doctors that go all over the state and sign the forms for eligible patients to get their medical marijuana card. No doctor will sign it, or at least very few, and they definitely won’t recommend it. If you are already taking it for pain, then I would guess you are taking the high CBD oil. That’s good for pain, but if you want the simpson kind that has been reported to get rid of the cancer, then you need the high THC strains. For that, you need the card and a source. We were fortunate to get both for my MIL. She was giving 8 months to live and just had a pet scan in month 7. About 75% of the cancer in the liver has disappeared and the doctors have no idea why. They planned on just keeping it from getting worse.
My MIL has been taking a low dose of cannabis oil, the high THC simpson type, for the past 6 months. She’s apprehensive about it and only takes it once at night. She’s finally up to .5g a night, I would like her to take 1g eveyr 24 hours but not sure we will get there. After 6 months of it and just getting a pet scan, her condition has improved dramatically. She was on chemo, gem/cis but has been missing alot in the past couple months because of her bloodwork not bouncing back. One 3cm tumor and several small tumors in her liver completely disappeared and the larger 7cm tumor is down 50% in size. They gave her 8 months to live with chemo. She’s in month 7. Needless to say we were surprised. Was it the cannabis? Was it the chemo? Who knows? She’s a believer now because the doctor had no explanation as to why the cancer is disappearing. He was hoping to just stop it from growing and buying her some time. We have another appointment tomorrow to discuss the next course of treatment, but I can tell you right now, she’s going to continue the cannabis oil. Oh, and to add to it, she had a cat scan about 3 months ago, and it showed the tumors were all the same size as when treatment started. So in the last 3 months, everything disappeared, and that’s when her chemo treatments were few and far between, but we really increased her cannabis intake.
So, the MIL pet scan was delayed a couple months because she had missed some treatments due to her blood work counts not rebounding enough. She had a cat scan about 4 months ago and that didn’t show any changes. Everything was the same size, so they continued the gem/cis (I think) chemo treatments. She just had her pet scan at 8 months and got the results.
So she had about a 7 cm tumor in the right lobe, and a couple little ones in the left, and a 3 cm tumor in the left lobe. The larger tumor in the right is completely gone. The little ones in the left are gone, and the 3 cm tumor in the left is down to about 1.5 cm in size. So 8 months ago, her liver was lite up like christmas, and now she’s down to just one small 1.5 cm tumor.
So what changed in the last 4 months when the cat scan showed everything was the same size? Well, hopefully I don’t end up dead for saying this, But we really ramped up the cannibis oil capsules. She’s only taking about 1/3 g every night, when ideally we want her to get up to 1 g every 24 hours, but she wasn’t much of a believer in it doing anything except giving her a buzz for a few hours when going to bed.
So, maybe it just took some time for the chemo to kick in, except the dr kept reducing the treatment doses to let her blood work rebound, so she was actually getting a lot less chemo in the past 4 months. Or, maybe it’s the cannibis oil. Whatever it is, I’ll take it as a win. We are going back to University of Michigan on Friday to discuss treatment options now that weren’t an option before. Hopefully they can do something more targeted because the chemo was really starting to take it’s toll on her.
Thank you for the post. University of Michigan was supposed to take one of the biopsy slides and get it genetically tested to check for clinical trials, but they never heard anything about it. The other thing we “heard” was that once you are over 70 (she is 72) you are considered elderly and probably won’t qualify for any clinical trials. Again, that was just something we “heard”. Yes, U of M was very familiar with CCA and their doctors were very confident and knowledgeable. Hopefully, this is a good reason to go back there after 6 months and get a review of everything and see what they have to say.
I thought I posted this comment already, but it might have got lost in the transition to the new forums.
So the MIL has missed the last two chemo treatments because the red blood count was too low, and the dr said if she misses two, then they have to change things up because that means her body is not rebounding quick enough and can’t handle the chemo. She hasn’t had any real side effects from the chemo, so changing it up could cause a whole new set of problems. She’s tired all the time but that could be the low red blood count. Her main dr is at university of michigan and she’s getting the chemo treatments locally by an oncologist she refers to as a “quack”. They are calling u of m now to get an appt and to make sure all the recent records are being sent there because dr quack seems to have just taken over and doing what he wants and they don’t think anything is being sent to u of m. Especially if he’s going to change up the chemo treatments. That’s supposed to be coming from u of m and not dr quacks office. So we’ll see. They originally talked to dr quack but the way he talks doesn’t inspire much confidence. Things like “well we will try this and see what happens”. Also, he has no patients with any form of liver cancer….is that because it’s rare or are they all gone? Either way, nobody wants to hear their dr say things like, “let’s try this”.
