I'm reading a very good book entitled The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Muckerjee. It has an interesting passage about Jana's cancer, chronic myologenous leukemia or CML, that I want to share. The quotation is by Dr. Hagop Kantarjian, an oncologist at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
"Before the year 2000, when we saw patients with chronic myeloid leukemia, we told them that they had a very bad disease, and their course was fatal, their prognosis was poor with a median survival of maybe three to six years, frontline therapy was allogeneic transplant. . .and there was no second-line treatment. . . Today when I see a patient with CML, I tell them that the disease is an indolent leukemia with an excellent prognosis, they will usually live their functional life span provided they take an oral medicine, Gleevec, for the rest of their lives."
The best "cure" in oncology.
David
Hi - I just stumbled across your website. My husband is in remission after a relapse, then autologus stem cell transplant for AML/APL leukemia. He is almost 3 years post transplant and doing well. I just finished radiotherapy for a difficult-to-classify brain tumour. I will have a MRI every three months. We live, like you, with constant tests and doctors visits. We're in Australia...but doing well. I have a very new and not-often-used blog: http://coogeegoo.wordpress.com/. We have two young kids that keep us busy! How do you deal with the "why us?" response that has no answer?
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment and for sharing your blog, Coogeegoo. To say that I enjoyed reading your blog would not be quite accurate because it is tragic that a young couple must face cancer they way you have; however, I did enjoy the excellent writing. You raise a good question about the “Why us” response to cancer, and I will share my thoughts in a blog post soon.
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