Harnessing the Immune System to Fight Cancer

An interesting read!

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/health/harnessing-the-immune-system-to-fight-cancer.html

Germany - Here I Come

After many hours online and speaking with various medical professionals, I have made the decision to seek further treatment in Germany at the Hallwang clinic. This was not an easy decision by any means but one I felt was necessary for a few reasons:

• My latest circulating tumor cell and Oncoblot test results were less than stellar
• The natural supplements and therapies I have been doing at home are proving to not be enough
• A recent study presented at the 2015 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium showed that adding capecitabine to adjuvant therapy reduced the risk of disease recurrence by 30% and prolonged survival by 40% for patients with residual breast cancer following neoadjuvant chemotherapy and surgery. Although it sounded like a promising alternative for me at first, I chose not to pursue capecitabine for several reasons:

1. Participants in the study were Japanese and Korean and according to my Oncologist, their genetic make-up is different so they may metabolize capecitabine differently leading to a potentially different response. Although the results of the study are very encouraging, it is also just one study and more need to be performed.
2. My Oncologist would not prescribe it for me for the reasons above which would have left me buying "black market" capecitabine...an option I was not thrilled by.
3. Even though it is "lighter" than AC-T, it is still chemo and does have side effects and toxicities to boot.

For these reasons, the immunotherapies offered in Germany seemed like a better fit for me rather than putting more toxins in my body and potentially making the cancer cells more aggressive and resistant. Of course, I believe that chemo is a necessary evil and do not regret my decision to do it the first time around but much of the most promising research lately has shown that immunotherapies are proving to be successful, especially with triple negative breast cancer. Unfortunately these immunotherapies like Keytruda are only available in clinical trials and very few are in Canada. Most are in the US and because I am still "in remission", I would not qualify anyways. It's too bad that I have to travel to another continent and pay out of pocket for these treatments but at the same time I am grateful that this is a viable option for me as I understand that for many, it is not.