Post from the NZ Herald:

Drugs give hope to melanoma patients

 A cancer researcher has predicted that advanced melanoma patients could survive the disease within five years, thanks to dramatically improved drugs.

Malignant melanoma is the most deadly form of skin cancer and New Zealand’s fourth most-common cancer. The country has one of the world’s highest incidence and death rates from malignant melanoma.

Each year, more than 2000 new cases are diagnosed and more than 250 people die from the disease.

If a melanoma is detected early it is readily treated by surgery. Of patients diagnosed with a tumour just 1mm thick and whose cells haven’t spread, more than 90 per cent will be alive five years later. But in cases where it has spread to organs before detection, fewer than 10 per cent are alive after five years.

However, a melanoma conference in Wellington yesterday heard hopeful news about the progress of drugs in clinical trials for patients with disease that has spread – metastatic melanoma.

“These advances offer the realistic promise of our being able to convert metastatic melanoma from a death sentence to a chronic disease within five years,” said Professor Richard Kefford, the director of the Westmead Institute for Cancer Research at Sydney University.

Read more.

I think the article is a bit too hopeful regarding the time frame, but this is certainly the way cancer treatment is heading. At the moment, though, melanoma treatment is not very effective. I really have no idea when/if these drugs are going to come into widespread use, but it will probably be too late to have any effect on me (either I’ll survive without them, or I’ll die before they are around).

Some interesting news about melanoma treatments came in to my inbox (as well as the usual frankly dismal survival stats).

A diagnosis of melanoma is very bad news: Millimeter per millimeter of tumor, it’s among the deadliest cancers. Typically first appearing as a dark, irregular skin lesion, it can spread rapidly to every organ. There are some 68,000 new cases of melanoma in the United States each year, and the incidence is growing, despite warnings to stay out of the sun or wear sunblock to minimize exposure to ultraviolet radiation, the disease’s most important risk factor. Highly curable if found early, melanoma grows aggressively if undetected. Nationwide the cancer kills almost 9,000 people a year, mostly those with fair skin, often in the prime of life and frequently within mere months of discovering that their cancer has metastasized far and wide.

The best hope is a harrowing treatment for which only the fittest patients qualify: intensive immunotherapy that uses high doses of interleukin-2 (IL-2), a potent immune hormone. IL-2 therapy requires multiple hospital stays, during which patients receive intravenous infusions several times a day. The catalogue of side effects includes a racing heart, flulike chills, decreased blood pressure, vomiting and diarrhea, and edema, which can cause 10 to 20 pounds of weight gain.

Even then, no more than 20% of patients who get the treatment benefit, though 6% appear cured for life. Still, immunotherapy is better than the only other Food and Drug Administration-approved treatment for advanced melanoma: Chemotherapy with dacarbazine gets only a 10% response rate, and patients survive an average of just seven months.

Keep reading.

Training the immune system to recognize melanoma cells seems to be one of the most promising of the two prongs of research into new treatments for the disease. (The other being switching off genes in the tumour.) I’ve been reading a lot about these results in the news, so thought I’d post a link to a summary.

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 2 (HealthDay News) — A T-cell receptor (TCR)-based gene therapy directed against NY-ESO-1 cancer/testis antigen may represent a new therapeutic approach for patients suffering from melanoma and synovial cell sarcoma, according to a study published online Jan. 31 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

More.

This is my current schedule for races:

Sunday 6th Feb: Watford Half Marathon

Sunday 6th Mar: Berkhamstead Half Marathon

Apr: [training]

Sunday 1st May: 3 Forts Marathon

Sunday 19th June: Torbay Half Marathon

July: undecided. Either Trailwalker or the Fairlands Valley Challenge Ultra 50

Sunday 14th August: Salisbury 5-4-3-2-1

September: New Forest Marathon (not yet open for entries)

Saturday October 29th: Snowdonia Marathon

Nov: Luton Marathon / BKK marathon (depending on funds)

Dec: nothing yet (but there will be).

Depending on how feel during the training, i may try and squeeze in a couple of 10ks or half marathons during the training only months (and other places if I can fit them into the program).

So why so much this year? I think ‘Fuck Cancer’ is a good enough reason. If I’m going to die, it’s going to be in a blaze of fucking glory. Melanoma can kiss my hairy ass.

Edited to add dates and the Torbay Half.

One of the operations I’ve had was to remove the lymph nodes from under my right arm (happened in April 2010). They warned me before the operation that there might be permanent side effects, one of which was nerve damage. After the op, I had patches of numbness down the back of my arm. Sometimes they prickled when touched, like pins and needles. At other times, they were just completely numb. Nine months later, it’s now settled down to lessened sensation down the back of my arm . . . and a patch of complete numbness in my armpit. It’s odd. it doesn’t feel like numbness from an anaesthetic, like when you go to the dentist and get a numb face (it’s numb, but you can feel it feeling numb, if that makes sense). It’s more like a hole in my body awareness.

So now when I put on deodorant, I spray my left armpit and get a cold feeling where the spray hits. You know that, right? It’s how you know you’re spraying in the right place. But when it comes to my right armpit, I feel nothing. If I’m feeling sleepy, I only stop when I start smelling the deodorant–and given my crappy sense of smell, that’s about the time my wife wakes up and starts yelling at me for stinking out the bedroom.

Not upsetting, like many things about cancer. Just . . . odd.

Well, it’s been a looong time since I updated here. The reasons for that are manifold, but the main one is that I now post regular updates on Facebook. If i know you and we’re not linked on facebook, send me a friend request. The email address I’m using there is euan DOT harvey AT gmail.com. Replace the whatsits with the doodads, of course.

For people I don’t know personally, I’ll divide this update into bits. First is health. The cancer seems to be stable at the moment. I’m not getting any new symptoms, but it could start growing again at any time, so I’m not holding my breath or about to announce that I’ve beaten it. The last conversation I had with my oncologist went something like this:

Him: “No symptoms?”

Me: “No.”

Him: “Hm.” [Grins]. “Well, that’s unusual.”

Which I guess is good.

I’m running a lot, which helps my mood and (may) help with keeping the cancer at bay. I’m registered for the Watford Half-Marathon (at least, I’ve sent off my form and they’ve cashed my check, so I guess I am), and I think they still have places. So if you live around Watford, get in there!

For writing, I haven’t touched pen to paper, or finger to keyboard, for a long time, but I will be starting again now I have achieved some measure of mental stability. The impetus came from selling two stories to Realms of Fantasy. I’m going to start with revising a couple of shorts I’ve got hanging around, and then perhaps think about starting something longer.

The family’s all good. My wife is very slowly adjusting to living in the UK. She’s started work now, which gives her much more focus. She complains about being tired–but she’s never really happy unless she’s complaining about something. She’s smiling a lot more, which tells me how she really feels.

I do intend to post more on this blog. So be prepared for a deluge of posts about running, and writing (and cancer).

Best wishes to you all for 2011.

Serious stomach pain all night, despite taking three codeine. Either it’s the mother of all ulcers, or the cancer has spread to my stomach. I’m calling the hospital to try and get an appointment ASAP.

I said I’d post yesterday, but I was too tired. The run was torture, but the press-ups afterwards were easier. Took two more Zopiclone, but couldn’t sleep very well (Sleep 8.45, waking: 12.30, 1.30, 3.00 (glass of milk), 4.45, 5.20). I got up eventually at 5.20 and had a couple of glasses of water. I felt tired, but about normal. But when I went back to try dozing again, I ended up rushing for the bathroom with saliva filling the back of my mouth, then spent about five minutes getting rid of the water and the milk.

So, that’s headaches (mild at the moment), nausea, fatigue, some dizziness. Is this due to a combination of insomnia and the side effects of Zopiclone? Or has the tumour woken up? (Two months after being zapped, which kind of sucks.)

Scan on Thursday next week. Counting down the days.

I’ve been having bad insomnia (bad, as in sleeping two hours, then waking up and not sleeping again until 5.30) since Saturday evening. Sunday I felt okay, just tired. But Monday and Tuesday I felt washed out completely: spinning head, some very mild vertigo, tiredness, etc. I tried using sleeping pills (Zopiclone) last night, and I woke up at 4.30, rather than 12.30, but I still feel like death. My stomach also hurts all the time.

So. It could be I’ve picked up some kind of infection; I’ve been sneezing as well, and my body temperature has been fluctating, shivering cold one moment, sweating the next. That would be the good option.

The other option is that the cancer has woken up and started growing again, and that these are the first symptoms of brain inflammation. I have a scan next Thursday, and a clinic appointment a week after that, so I’ll know then.

In the meantime, I’m going to go for a long run (warmly wrapped up), and see what I feel like after that.

I haven’t posted anything for a while, mainly because there’s been nothing much to report. Much as I might dislike it, my life now revolves around the fact that I have cancer. It’s not the whole of my life, but it’s certainly one of the main pivots, along with my family. So, in this case, no new posts meant nothing much to say. (Rather than being unable to say anything.)

I’ve shaken off the last of the somnolence from the WBR. And although I still have insomnia–I wake up every night at around 1.30–I’ve given up on sleeping pills, and I’m feeling much better for it. I’ve stopped taking codeine as well, and although I had headaches for the first couple of days, I now feel much better: no headaches, and my digestion seems to have settled. Drugs are useful for certain things, but they also have various unpleasant side effects. If you can stop them, you should. (YMMV of course.)

On the depression front, my mood has lifted a lot. Mainly, I suspect, because my brain (and its vari0us neurotransmitters) is settling down after being abused by the WBR. But also I’m sure due to exercise: running three times a week*, skipping**, stretching, and working my way through a 100 push up program***. Dopamine is a wonderful thing, and although it may hurt like, well, something very painful, running**** up hills will make you feel great when you finish.

And on a final note, my levels of fitness dropped to frankly fricken pathetic after the operation in April and the subsequent brain tumour fiasco. But today, as I was doing my final block of running, I felt for a short time like I did six months ago: that I was flying over the grass with my feet barely touching the ground and everything working in perfect time–breathing deep, arms swinging, legs pumping.

It was wonderful.

* Walk/run actually. The program I’m following is here. I just finished week 4.

**Don’t laugh. Ask boxers how hard this is. I’m doing 1 minute blocks of rope-jumping with 1 minute rests for a total of 30 minutes. harder than it sounds.

***Current maximum: 6. LOL, sad, right? Mind you, I started at 3, so there has been improvement.

****Actually, jogging while wheezing like a consumptive, but there you go.