We have all gone through this.

This is just what we have gone through.
But the main thing here is to ask questions and look at alternatitives. The best may not be surgery, so you will haev to ask to find out.



Episode 4-”The Plan”

That’s five days from now. She would be admitted to the emergency room at the hospital now and held in the intensive care unit for one day to evaluate her condition and to treat her headaches. I hate to admit this, but one of my first fears had to do with wether our health care coverage would be ready for the hospital bills that I pictured were already in to six digits and climbing on the first 5 minute phone call. Then, I chastised myself and started thinking about all that advice I had heard about a second opinion. Maybe they had it wrong. Those lime disease bugs started sounding better all the time. As things settled down in my head, a list of questions finlly started to form:

1. How certain was the MRI?

2.Was it also read by another physician?

3. Yes, the pathologist has already reviewed it and had a consultation on the diagnosis. Three doctors agreed on the brain tumor diagnosis. That made it very unlikely that it could be anything else.

4. What alternatives were there to brain surgery?

5. Where should we have the work done?

Brain Tumor Vaccine

This will be too late for my dad, but it is very interesting way of treating glioma. I wish them every success with their trials.



UCSF News Office - UCSF launches new phase of brain tumor vaccine trial

The Brain Tumor Research Center at the University of California, San Francisco has initiated a Phase 2 clinical trial of an investigational vaccine for treating glioma, a recurrent cancer of the central nervous system that occurs primarily in the brain.

The primary objective of the new trial is to evaluate overall survival in patients receiving vitespen vaccination (trademarked as Oncophage).

In an earlier Phase 1 trial of the vaccine, UCSF researchers showed that it was effective in stimulating the patient’s immune system to attack tumor cells. Of the 12 patients treated, all showed an immune response.