Blog Administrator, John Fink is a Stage 4 Cancer Survivor
I often joke and say, “I’m the only person in the world who had a colostomy as a result of head and neck cancer.” That’s usually associated with colon cancer. Maybe I’m not. I have a friend who went to the same cancer treatment center that I did for breast cancer (The Dana Farber Cancer Institute) She too has a colostomy… Strange things going on at that hospital.
On the “MY Story” page of the web site, YourCancerInfo.com, I referred to the hospital where I first went for treatment as “a very well known Cancer Treatment Center and hospital in Boston”. After they almost killed me, they washed their hands of me. “You don’t respond well to our chemotherapy” they said and suggested I go some place else for treatment.
Following my cancer treatment I was weak and fatigued. This is
not at all unusual for cancer patients. Especially for those of
us who endured chemotherapy, surgery and radiation.
Quite often, cancer patients, weakened by treatments are simply
sent home to rest and recuperate. We are left to regain
physical strength on our own.
Things are changing. Today, many hospitals and oncologists are
recommending exercise and other physical therapies and fitness
programs. Cancer survivors and patients who participate in an
exercise or a fitness program, often experience fewer side
effects from chemotherapy and make greater advances in regaining
strength and energy. Ask your trusted health care professional
to recommend an exercise program or physical therapist.
Unfortunately, patients suffering from the severe fatigue,
weakened muscles, and depression are often sent home without
having an exercise or physical therapy plan. This means, it
could take years to fully (if ever) recover.
Fortunately, physicians are beginning to look past the
chemotherapy, radiation and the surgical knife to consider
the patients’ life when we go home. Being “Cancer Free” and being
healthy are two different things.
A healthy person who has never experienced cancer or another
major disease will feel fatigued without exercise. This is even
more so for the cancer patient. Cancer-related fatigue does not
go away with rest; it requires some form of physical fitness
activity.
My suggestion is to fine a well trained physical therapist. They
are trained to keep you within a well-defined range of sensible
activity.
According to an assessment by the Memorial Hospital in Colorado;
“One patient’s pain declined by 50 percent in a month.” During
that month, his oxygen level improved by 53 percent. The patient
also reported 39 percent less fatigue. (Memorial Hospital physical
therapist Liz Bauer)
The increase in our oxygen level as a result of exercise is
crucial to our well-being and over-all health. I don’t always
exercise as I should. However I do take an oxygen supplement on
a daily basis. I believe this was a major factor in my recovery
and ongoing health.
Prior to getting cancer, I never read food labels. If it looked or sounded good, I bought it. Now a days I pay attention to my diet and other health issues. Here are some tips I learned about reading food labels.
You cannot measure every morsel that passes your lips, but it is a good idea to measure most foods and beverages until you get a feel for portion sizes.
It is a supersized world out there, and most people are surprised to find that their idea of a single serving is actually two or three.
If you are into bells and whistles, there are food scales that are preprogrammed with nutritional information, as well as scales that will keep a running total of your daily food and nutrient intake for you. The only tools you really need, however, are a simple and inexpensive gram scale, dry and liquid measuring cups, and idea on reading food labels.
Among all of the mentioned tools, reading food labels seem to be the most effective way of determining the right kind of food to be bought in the supermarket. It lets you make sensible food selections. Through the “Nutrition Facts” section in a particular item in the grocery, you can identify the amount of serving sizes provided in that product.
With food labels, you can clearly understand the amount and kinds of nutrients that are provided in the item. Usually, it contains the information on saturated fat, sodium, total fat, fiber, and cholesterol amount “per serving.”
However, understanding and reading these food labels can be very perplexing. A typical consumer would definitely ask what those numbers mean and how it will affect her diet intake if ever she will religiously follow the serving guide as stipulated on the food label.
To further have a clear and more comprehensive understanding of the items stated in the food label, here is a list of things that you need to know:
1. Serving size
This is the primary item you will see in a food label.
The amount of servings stated in the food label refers to the quantity of food people usually consume. However, this does not necessarily mean that it reflects your very own amount of food intake.
Moreover, serving size determines the amount of nutrients that enters the body. This means that if you will follow strictly what the serving size is, you will obtain the same amount of nutrients according to the serving size that was given in the label.
For instance, if the serving size says one serving size is equal to 54 grams, that would mean you have to measure 54 grams and eat that and you have just eaten one serving. So to speak, the amount of nutrients stated in the food label is the same amount that has entered your body considering the fact that you have just eaten 54 grams.
However, if you have eaten everything, and the food label says that each pack is equivalent to 4 servings, you have to calculate the amount of nutrients that have entered your body. This means that if the food label says 250 calories per serving that means you have to multiply it to four to get the total amount of calories you have taken.
2. Nutrients
This refers to the list of available nutrients in a particular item. It is also where the nutritional claims of the product based on the recommended daily dietary allowance are stated. Usually, the nutritional amounts are based on both the 2,500-calorie diets and the 2,000 recommended dietary allowances.
In order to understand the numeric value of each item, you should know that the “% daily value” that the food label indicates is actually based on how a particular food corresponds to the recommended daily dietary allowance for a 2,000 calorie.
If in the event that you have purchased an item that has a dietary allowance different from the 2,000-calorie diet, you just have to divide the stipulated amount by 2,000 and you will be able to identify the “%daily value” for the nutrients.
3. Ingredients
This refers to the list of the ingredients that were used to manufacture the product. The listing is usually arranged from the main ingredients that have the greater amount by weight up to the smallest quantity. This simply means that the actual quantity of the food includes the biggest quantity of the main ingredient or the first item and the minimum amount of the very last ingredient.
4. Label claim
This refers to the kinds of nutritional claims of a particular food item. For instance, if an item says it is sodium-free, it has less than 5 milligrams per serving or a low fat item actually contains 3 grams of fat or less.
Indeed, reading food labels can be very tedious and confusing. Nevertheless, once you get the hang of it, it would be easier for you to watch your diet because you can already control the amount of food that you take.
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Treating cancer patients with anemia drugs increases their risk of blood clots and death, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday, confirming concerns about these widely used drugs.
Researchers said the drugs, including Amgen Inc’s Aranesp and Johnson & Johnson’s Procrit, raised the risk of death by 10 percent in patients who took them, a finding that could not be explained by the higher blood clot risk alone.
“Our findings, in conjunction with basic science studies, raise the concern that the drug may be stimulating cancer and shortening cancer patients’ survival,” Dr. Charles Bennett of Northwestern University in Chicago said in a statement.
The study, which appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association, sent shares of both companies lower in extended-hours trading on Monday.
“The findings of mortality are new and are different from prior reports,” Bennett said in a telephone interview. He said the drugs, erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs), also increased the risk of blood clots in the lungs and legs by 57 percent in cancer patients, confirming other findings.
An advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is due to discuss safety concerns about the drugs on March 13.
Eric Snyder, an analyst at Mehta Partners, said most investors expected the FDA panel meeting to result in tighter restrictions on the use of anemia drugs.
Worldwide sales of Aranesp fell 12 percent to $3.6 billion in 2007 compared with 2006, while sales of Procrit fell 9.4 percent to $2.9 billion over the same period.
Last March, the FDA warned of an increased risk of serious and life-threatening side effects in a public health advisory on ESAs. And last fall, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services tightened its reimbursement policy for elderly cancer patients on ESAs.
The drugs generated up to $6 billion in cancer-anemia related sales last year for drug companies and represented Medicare’s largest drug expenditure, Bennett said.
Anemia is a common complication of cancer treatment. Millions of cancer and kidney disease patients take ESAs, man-made versions of a human hormone that stimulate production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells.
Amgen spokeswoman Ashleigh Koss said the study does not define any new risks associated with ESAs, and the blood clot risk is included in current labeling.
She said doctors and patients need to weigh the drugs’ benefit (avoiding a blood transfusion) and risks and use them appropriately.
J&J said in a statement the study’s conclusions “do not provide an accurate reflection of the safety profile” of ESAs when used to treat chemotherapy-induced anemia.
“When used according to product labeling, ESAs remain safe and effective and are the only proven treatment alternative to blood transfusions for patients with chemotherapy-induced anemia,” the company said.
Known as a meta-analysis, the study culled data from 51 clinical trials with 13,611 patients treated with ESAs or a placebo. It updates a 2006 report from the Cochrane Collaboration, which studies health-care issues, with additional data on 5,000 patients from 13 clinical trials, many of which addressed the issue of survival. The 2006 report did not show an increased risk of death.
The study is an update of a presentation Bennett made to the American Society of Clinical Oncology in June and includes data through January 17, 2008.
The drugs were approved by the FDA as a treatment for anemic cancer patients to avoid blood transfusions.
“The current FDA recommendation is these drugs are safe for cancer patients as long their hemoglobin levels aren’t raised too high. Our data do not support that,” Bennett said in a statement.
Dr. Michael Henke of the University of Freiburg, Germany, who worked on the latest analysis, said the study would likely affect treatment guidelines, and that more research was needed to understand the effects of the drugs on cancer patients.
“We suspect that ESAs activate survival pathways in cancer cells,” Henke said.
J&J’s shares fell 1.5 percent to $62.76 in after-hours trading, while shares of Amgen fell 1.9 percent to $46.90
.
(Additional reporting by Deena Beasley; Editing by Toni Reinhold)
I write a lot about my lack of faith and distrust of both the pharmaceutical industry and of the FDA. I still have a port-a-cath, that was implanted during my chemotherapy. I have to have it flushed every four to six weeks. To do this the nurses use a blood thinner called Heparin.
Naturally when I came across an article in the Washington Post about the FDA in its plan to inspect a Chinese facility that supplies the active ingredient of Heparin, it caught my attention.
Here is the article:
According to the FDA, the Chinese facility that supplies the active ingredient of the widely used blood thinner heparin was never inspected because the agency confused it with another plant that had the same name.
A team of FDA inspectors is now headed to China to inspect the correct plant, as part of an effort to determine what caused a sudden spike in serious reactions to heparin.
More than 350 adverse reactions to the drug have been reported to the FDA since the end of 2007, including a dangerous drop in blood pressure, breathing difficulties, and vomiting. Four patients who took the drug died.
Federal law does not require inspections of foreign drug makers, although the agency will in most instances inspect before a new foreign drug or active drug ingredient is allowed in FDA-approved prescription medications. Such an inspection does not necessarily include an on-site visit if the company has passed previous inspections for other drugs.
I hope the problem has been resolved by now. I am scheduled to have my port-a-cath flushed tomorrow afternoon.
Read the entire article:
Like many cancer survivors who have endured chemotherapy treatments, I have often said, “The treatment was worse than the disease.” Why is it that, in spite of the very dangerous side effects of chemotherapy, it still seems to be the choice treatment of many oncologists? Do you think it might be because administering chemotherapy is very profitable for the oncologists?
Did you know that cancer doctors are allowed to profit from the sale of chemotherapy drugs? It is totally restricted and exclusive for oncologists. I don’t know of any other group of doctors who are allowed to profit from the sale of drugs.
Think about this. A significant amount of revenue for oncologists comes from the profit they make from selling the chemotherapy drugs. Do you think that is why chemotherapy is so widely used by oncologists? Is it “All about the money?”
Do you think oncologists might be tempted to give you the drug that they’re going to make the most profit from? I like to have the faith that my doctor has my best interest at heart. Unfortunately, the money incentives, does something to destroy my faith.
Here is what I believe to be a perfect example of that. Trisha Torrey, was told by her doctor, “You have a very rare cancer — a lymphoma — called Subcutaneous Panniculitis-like T-Cell Lymphoma.” Her doctor referred her to an oncologist. The news from the oncologist was very discouraging. She was told, without chemo she would be dead before Christmas. She asked about the possibility that the lab results were wrong. She was told, “No — not a chance. Two labs had independently confirmed the results.” She said the pressure began to mount to begin chemotherapy.
Terry sought out the opinion of another oncologist. Three weeks later, in late September, she was given the confirmation that, in fact, she had no cancer. Is it possible her first oncologist was pressuring her into having chemotherapy because of the money he would make? I don’t know but it is a scary thought.
Oncologists are very much like the business owners of retail stores. According to a recent NBC News Report, oncologists make most of their income by buying products (drugs) wholesale and selling them to patients at retail.
Like any business owner, the private practice oncologists, are entitled to, and deserve to make a living. My question is; should they make their money from treating patients or by SELLING the drugs? Other types of doctors don’t have that option.
And where do you think the oncologists get their information about the drugs they are selling? It comes from the pharmaceutical sales person. Do you think that information might be biased?
How did this practice start? It started because Medicare and the insurance companies wanted to save money by transferring cancer treatments out of the hospital and into the hands of private practice oncologists. Again, it’s all about the money. Unfortunately, that greed backfired and we the patients are paying the price. Since that policy was initiated, prices for many cancer drugs soared to tens of thousands of dollars a year.
All chemotherapy drugs used in the United States have been approved by the FDA. Does that make them safe? Do you think pharmaceutical companies influences the FDA into approving dangerous drugs the way they influence the private practice cancer doctors? I do.
I believe the pharmaceutical companies, and their lobbyists, have too much influence over the decision-making and policy of oncologists and the FDA.
It is well known that the FDA has allowed many drugs, including chemotherapy, to remain on the market in spite of serious risk factors. How did it come to pass that dangerous drugs get approved by the FDA and oncologists make significant profits from selling them? Meet the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the drug industry trade group
PhRMA lobbied for the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) of 1992. The drug industry agreed to help finance the approval process — in exchange for an FDA promise to speed up its deliberations. Does this make the FDA financially beholden to the industry it is supposed to regulate? I think so.
There are many natural non-toxic chemotherapies that kill malignancies. Laetrile, which is basically vitamin B17 selectively seeks out and destroys cancer cells and is available in many plant foods. It does that without harming healthy cels. Maybe the farmers who grow those plants should give oncologists a commission for selling their crops.
In spite of the tone of this article, I AM NOT AGAINST going to an oncologist for cancer treatment. I am not against all chemotherapy treatments. I am suggesting that you do as Trisha Torrey did; get a second opinion,
I almost died from my first two rounds of chemotherapy. I also felt the oncologists were arrogant and egotistical. I wasn’t at all comfortable with them. I then returned to the cape where I live and started my treatment all over again. My doctor on the cape, Dr. Victor Aviles, did in fact treat me with chemotherapy. It was not the same drug as the Boston doctors used. I do not believe he chose this drug because of the profit motive. It was the drug best suited for my particular cancer. I always felt very comfortable with him.
My closing thought. If you are not totally comfortable with your doctor, get another one. There are wonderful, dedicated and honest oncologists out there. You may have to visit several to find the right one for you.
Do you think oncologist should profit from selling chemotherapy drugs? No other group of doctors can do that. Let me know your thoughts in the comments section.
Tonight my local TV news reported that Patrick Swayze, the star of Dirty Dancing, who has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, was expected to die from the disease within weeks. Fortunately, later national news reports are much more optimistic.
Swayze has pancreatic cancer which has the highest fatality rate of all cancers. The average life expectancy after diagnosis is between three and six months. The most recent reports indicate that Swayze may very well beat those odds.
Swayze’s physician, Dr. George Fisher said in a statement released by the actor’s publicist. “All of the reports stating the time frame of his prognosis and his physical side effects are absolutely untrue. We are considerably more optimistic.”
According to Dr. Fisher, “Patrick is continuing his normal schedule during this time, which includes working on upcoming projects”
Our prayers are with Patrick. This author knows from personal experience that even late stage 4 cancer is not an automatic death sentence. I wish Patrick the same miraculous recover that I was blessed with.
You can send Patrick your well wishes at:
Patrick Swaze c/o
William Morris Agency
One William Morris Place
Beverly Hills, California 90212
I am a survivor of head and neck cancer. I never thought
much about skin cancer. I was aware of the fact that too much
exposure to the sun could cause skin cancer.
I have always known, to some extent, that our skin tells a
lot about our health. When my 3rd child was born, the doctors were
concerned because her skin was blue. That indicated a lack of oxygen. (A
condition I suffered with for many years.) The skin is truly a window of what is
going on underneath the skin and deep with inside of our body. If we have too
many toxins in our body, the skin turns yellow. The skin also reflects less
serious things that are going on in our body. If we are embarrassed, our skin
is likely to turn red.
A healthy skin tone is a result of at least four things.
Good nutrition,
Being toxic free,
An adequate supply of oxygen,
Using a skin
cream that utilizes all natural active ingredients.
I’m almost 70 years old and
I have just decided to use an all natural ingredient skin cream.
It is not the purpose of this article to provide you with a
nutritional diet for healthy skin. If you don’t have one, find one.
I will share with you what I have learned about having a healthy skin tone and how to protect yourself from skin cancer.
I mentioned the importance of drinking a lot of water.
Drinking a sufficient amount of water is not only good for the skin; it is good
for our over-all health. It needs to be noted that it is the oil in our skin
that traps the moisture our skin needs. If we are not consuming sufficient good
oils our skin can dehydrate.
If you have questions about this post, please ask them in
the comment section.
As you may know I recently survived Stage 4 cancer. I had serious, and ongoing complications from my chemotherapy treatments, my surgeries, and my radiation treatments. My initial chemotherapy treatment resulted in surgery and 32 consecutive days in the hospital. I was discharged to a Rehabilitation (Nursing Home) Center. When I was finally able to return home, my surgical wounds would not heal. I had the Visiting Nurses coming to my house twice a day.
During my recovery, a friend of mine gave me a liquid oxygen supplement. I started to take my oxygen daily. My surgical wounds healed, I felt better and slept better than I had for years. I was even able to celebrate by going to Ireland for a month.
I didn’t know that oxygen was a nutrient and we are not getting a sufficient supply. Did you know the earth’s supply of oxygen has been in a state of decline from the beginning of time? Researchers have determined that the oxygen in our atmosphere today is as much as one-third less than in ancient times, and continues to decline, at an accelerated rate.
The stabilized oxygen supplement I now take is called O2+ and I believe it is the best product available today. It is produced in a FDA approved lab that utilizes GMP.
Another reason I may have been stricken with cancer and my early recovery was difficult was I also discovered I had something called ACIDOSIS. That’s a scary-sounding word. It just means too much acid waste in our body. I just said Acidosis “just means” like it isn’t anything serious. It is actually quite serious.
Acidosis is the result of too much acid waste in our body. Acidosis is also considered by many researchers to be the basic foundation of all disease. It’s a real silent killer.
I have also come to realize that not only is the air we breath filled with pollution, but most of the food we eat is is acid-forming (the cause of my Acidosis) and this dramatically impacts on the body’s pH. I now keep tabs on my pH level and take a product called pH Plus. pH Plus is the perfect companion supplement with O2 Plus. Together they effectively address the two critical elements in chronic illness, an acid pH and lack of oxygen.