home again

I think I've set a record - I listened to about 130 presentations over four days. That's definitely immersion in oncology. How much of it will I retain, though? Probably only highlights and tidbits, such as how to incorporate agents into post-remission therapy, which could lengthen remission and survival. I heard about vaccine therapy for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, one of the more deadly cancers. We normally think of vaccines as a means to prevent contraction of disease, yet in oncology, it's now being used to slow, stop, and/or reverse disease. Pretty cool. Indolent follicular lymphoma is the second most common NHL, and is usually advanced at presentation. Patients are often asymptomatic, and it's non-curable with traditional chemo. The key messages here were to try to get patients into trials so this lymphoma can be studied in more detail, to understand how to observe asymptomatic patients, and to use local radiation for stage 1.

Combo therapy was a big topic. There were a lot of comparisons of therapy plus chemo, therapy instead of chemo, therapy before or after chemo; with chemo tends to win out in terms of progression of cancer, remission, relapse, and survival rates after treatment.

I was particularly intrigued by the HPV vaccine presentation. Have you seen the commerials that use the scare tactic "cancer from a virus?" Here's the thing, while 80% of women will be infected with HPV, only about 7% will develop cervical cancer from it, but they don't tell you that in the commercials, which make it out to be the next epidemic. Apparently, there is talk of routine vaccination in girls as young as 9 years old (one question was even asked about the possibility of mandatory vaccination). The vaccine is more effective in females who have not had exposure to any sexual activity and in younger women (high school age) vs older (college-age). I've come across several articles (the most well-written one by Christiane Northrup) arguing against mass vaccination, primarily due to the low rate of HPV progressing to cervical cancer and lack of data on the long-term effect of vaccine, especially in girls still developing hormonally (ie, does it have the potential to affect menstruation, pregnancy, menopause, etc). I think the better thing to do would be to figure out which 7% will develop the cancer and focus on treating them. Just a thought.

Toxicity and side effects are obvious concerns. Many of these treatments are essentially controlled poisoning. Yes, they fight the cancer, but they do a hell of a lot of other damage in the process. And the problem with toxicity is that you may have to stop treatment, reduce dose, or change treatment, either temporarily or permanently, which risks progression of disease. Again, methinks there should be more focus on making these treatments less toxic, so that the immune system can be helped by them, rather than hindered. It's never a good idea to mess with the body's ability to take care of itself, yet that seems to be what Western medicine is primarily about.

Bob and I did manage to get some time out in the city. We went to Max Brenner's for a dark chocolate fondue lunch - I've never seen chocolate so incredibly smooth like this was. The whole place is all about chocolate - margaritas, martinis, crepes, and all kinds of concoctions and goodies. The company logo is a clever one-continuous-line drawing of Max's head.

We also had dinner at Asia de Cuba - that's right, cuban and asian food fusion. The waiters wear those Chairman Mao jackets, and though the tables and floor and walls (covered floor to ceiling with white curtains) are all white, it's very dim in there. The food was great - Bob and I just got a bunch of appetizers, one of which was skewered chicken with what tasted like cinnamon bun glaze.

Poor Bob. He ended up spending most of his time in his hotel room working out emergencies for our next meeting in NY in a couple of weeks. Funny that, the company paid for him to go to NY to catch up on the latest and greatest in oncology, and instead was paying for him to do work that he would have done back in the office. And the Marriott Marquis is not a cheap place to stay. Oh well, it's their dime.

I got back home late last night and slept until about noon today, woke up with a sinus headache from all this rain and the lovely NY air, too probably.

I've completely fallen off with my daily word quota, so I need to get back on track with that. Same thing happened last year due to another business trip, but I still managed to get to 50K, so I'm not worried. Yet.