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.

An option for brain tumors.

Although this will be too late for my dad, it is great to hear of some advances.

I hope all this goes well.




Tailored virus kills brain cancer cells in mice

Tailored virus kills brain cancer cells in mice

Sept. 11, 2007
Courtesy M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
and World Science staff

A cus­tomized vi­rus in a mouse study killed stem cells that cause an ex­tremely ag­gres­sive, te­na­cious brain can­cer, re­search­ers re­port.

Sci­en­tists at the Un­ivers­ity of Tex­as M. D. An­der­son Can­cer Cen­ter in Hous­ton, Tex­as an­nounced the find­ings in the Sept. 18 is­sue of the Jour­nal of the Na­t­ional Can­cer In­sti­tute.

The vi­rus “can tar­get and elim­i­nate the cells that drive brain tu­mors,” by es­sen­tially forc­ing them to eat them­selves, said study co-author Juan Fue­yo. The re­search­ers said they ex­pect to sub­mit a re­quest to launch a clin­i­cal tri­al of the vi­rus, called Delta-24-RGD, this month.

They tested the vi­rus against the most ag­gres­sive brain tu­mor, glioblas­toma mul­ti­forme, which orig­i­nates in spe­cial­ized cells known as glia, Fue­yo said. Glia sur­round and sup­port neu­rons, the brain cells that con­duct elec­tri­cal sig­nals.

Glioblas­toma mul­ti­forme re­sists radia­t­ion and chem­o­ther­a­py treat­ments and is so in­va­sive that sur­gery al­most nev­er elim­i­nates it, Fue­yo and col­leagues said. Pa­tients suf­fer­ing from this ma­lig­nan­cy live on av­er­age for about 14 months with treat­ment.

lack of effective therapies?? why were we not told.

It is interesting what you read. Especially after the event, this little quote caught my eye.

"lack of effective therapies" we were never told about that ever.....


Brain Tumor Stem Cells Killed By Experimental Anti-Cancer Drug

Our study lends evidence to the idea that the lack of effective therapies for glioblastoma may be due to the survival of a rare population of cancer stem cells that appear immune to conventional radiation and chemotherapy," says Charles G. Eberhart, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of pathology, ophthalmology and oncology, who led the work. "Hedgehog inhibition kills these cancer stem cells and prevents cancer from growing and may thus develop into the first stem cell-directed therapy for glioblastoma."

survival less than one year! Glioblastoma

This sounds like my dad.
It is likely he will lat less than a year.


Expression of Interleukin-13 Receptor {alpha}2 in Glioblastoma Multiforme: Implications for Targeted Therapies -- Jarboe et al. 67 (17): 7983 -- Cancer Research

Glioblastoma multiforme is the most common primary malignant brain tumor and despite treatment with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, the median survival of patients with glioblastoma multiforme is ~1 year.

how can you help someone witha brain tumor

there are lots of ways to help someone or the families if they have a brain tumor.
check this audio out, it is from ww.dadsbraintumor.com

how to help

brain tumor symptoms audio

this is an audio clip about dad's brain tumor symptoms that we have just added to the dadsbraintumor.com website.
I hope the link works OK.

MP3 Dads brain tumor symptoms