MSI Press Blog

  Recently on Twitter, a cancer victim complained that friends kept elatedly sending her information about a potential cure for rectal cancer. She suffers from breast cancer! Sort of like rubbing salt in a wound, but the confusion is understandable for those who know little about cancer. Our vet (oncology expert) suggested that we ask Carl's oncologists to consider immunotherapy for Carl. We clung to that possibility initially since immunotherapy had thrown our little Snyezhka into full remission after having been given a maximum of four months to live. Nearly two years later, she is still with us and is healthy.  Carl was given just days to live when he was diagnosed with advanced metastatic cancer involving five organs. We clung to the hope that Stanford University Cancer Center might recommend immunotherapy; that was one of the possibilities the oncologist mentioned. Yes! However, immunotherapy is highly targeted -- against the source cancer. Test after test ruled out each ...

photo: care.com When Carl was dying from Cancer of Unknown Primary , we were facing the question of how to handle his 24/7 needs for care. Everything was compressed during that time -- decisions had to be made without the time to reasonably research them and rationally make them. (That is the primary reason MSI Press established Carl's Cancer Compendium : to pull together a lot of the basic, time-consuming research that could be accessed with just a couple of clicks).  When we decided to try chemotherapy, he became not eligible for hospice care. IMHO, there is a problem with the binary system behind hospice availability. Decide to work on dying - hospice is available. Decide to work on living -- you're on your own. Yet, this is exactly the time that patients and their families need help; being on your own is certain to result in a range of emotions, including anger and frustration, as well as poorly informed decisions, burnout from family member who cannot do everything and be...

  A new pleasure emerged this week. It turns out that Bear, who loves the outdoors but is an indoor cat, is quite willing to tolerate a leash. Now, he will take off like a dog, running with the wind and causing me take more than big strides to keep up. Both of us g on flat-out runs. Murjan , a much-beloved cat, who died in 2021 at the respectable age of almost 19 after 3.5 years of chemotherapy for lymphoma, loved to be taken for walks. (He never ran; he ambled -- perhaps the age made a difference since Bear is only a couple of years old.) Murjan even developed a special meow that sounded like "out" -- mwout -- that he would insistently repeat until the leash appeared and the door opened. the only other cat I have had who showed any interest in walking outside, but, supposedly, most cats can be trained to walk on a leash with patience and persistence although it's important to keep in mind that not all cats will take to it. Here are some steps to help with the process: 1....

  This looks promising! A potential new drug for chemotherapy-resistance cancers. Get the details HERE . For other Cancer Diary posts, click  HERE . Blog editor's note: As a memorial to Carl, and simply because it is truly needed, MSI Press is now hosting a web page,  Carl's Cancer Compendium , as a one-stop starting point for all things cancer, to make it easier for those with cancer to find answers to questions that can otherwise take hours to track down on the Internet and/or from professionals. The CCC is expanded and updated weekly. As part of this effort, each week, on Monday, this blog will carry an informative, cancer-related story -- and be open to guest posts:  Cancer Diary .   Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC? Check out information on  how to submit a proposal . Interested in receiving a free copy of this or any M...

  image from www.cancercenter.com When Carl was diagnosed with cancer, our vet-oncologist, who was successfully treating several of our cats who have various forms of cancer -- skin cancer, lymphoma, breast cancer, lung cancer -- with immunotherapy and encouraged us to ask for immunotherapy for Carl. If only... As it turned out, immunotherapy has to be targeted as the primary cancer organ, and that organ could not be found for Carl, who was eventually (but quickly) diagnosed with cancer of unknown primary (a very rare and deadly form of cancer, but we have heard of a couple of other folks in our social circles who experienced it -- and died as quickly as he did). Fortunately, for most of the organs, there are now immunotherapies (and research is finding/creating more). So, most people now have a choice between chemotherapy and immunotherapy -- and maybe some other treatments. For an updated list from the Cancer Research Institute on the latest immunotherapies, check here . This pa...

  Today would have been the 54th anniversary for Carl  and me. Last year, I spent it in the cemetery with Carl, as I did the year before. This year I cannot because I am in Bandung, Indonesia, but perhaps that is just as well.  On our 51st, he was alive, but not well. Three weeks earlier, he had fallen, been xrayed, and found to be in the advanced stage of cancer of unknown primary , with liver, lungs, bones, and stomach completely riddled with cancer cells, blood clots in his lungs, and his bones throwing off cells to create hypercalcemia, the reason he had fallen. It was a difficult time. We were just coming out of the covid months. We brought our CHARGE Syndrome son CB who had been living in group homes for 20 years home when they were not careful with protection from covid. At the same time, our spina bifida daughter, who lives about 30 miles to the south of us, independently, with a county-provided part-time aide lost her caregiver to surgery and no one wanted to tak...

  Our beloved 12-year-old cat, Snyezhka , a Siamese mix whom we rescued from a life on the street when she was 1-2 years old, pulling her from a fight with two tom cats that she seemed to be winning in spite of unfair odds, has appeared in Caturday posts before. So, if you want to see more information about her -- and more pictures -- just click on the link. Snyezhka went from street cat to lap cat not immediately but gradually, with time, gaining confidence in her relationships with the humans and other felines in our house. She immediately recognized Happy Cat because he had been rescued from the street before she was, and they had bonded. That helped her to blend into the family (of six cats and three people) fairly quickly. She became my lap cat, always snuggling up to me even when there was not a lap available. Clearly, she loved her family. She had no desire to go back on the street nor to take even a step outdoors when a door was left accidentally open although she loved sit...

  (diagram and contents of diagram from Beth Frates via Twitter) Literature gives suggestions for caregiver as if life is calm and caregivers are never angry or stressed out (implying that it is wrong to be so). The reality is that even in the best of circumstances, i.e. the existence of good support systems, caregivers do burn out . Thinking that other caregivers do not and that it is wrong to be angry or somehow even to instinctively respond with an unkind word or behavior is somehow is unique and makes one a bad person creates quite a guilt trip later.  In normal, circumstances, caregivers become sleep-deprived. Sleep deprivation leads NATURALLY to short tempers, frequent frustration, and, yes, bad decisions. Individuals' decisions that are made while sleep deprived cannot be thought of as intentional or well considered. At one point, I was so sleep-deprived that I fell asleep and drove off the road and into a field of cabbage (fortunately, I was not on a major highway), w...