Back for round three, this time with Jack, my son, for company. We have explored Duderstadt and discovered more than I found in the past two trips put together!
Diagnosed with stage 4 stomach/esophageal cancer in July 2013 and offered 'palliative' treatment in Australia – a round of radiation with chemo to shrink the tumour and stop the bleeding followed by a welcome break in which we busily got the house ready for sale then three rounds of non-stop chemotherapy with Xeloda over 60 odd days – by the middle of the third course my hands and feet were extremely 'ouchy' and shedding skin and I had all the energy of a 55 year old bloke who'd been on 60 non-stop days of chemotherapy.
So, thanks to the shared experience of Simon and Kate McRae and their discovery of Biosceptre's work and the brilliant Doctors Neßelhut I abandoned chemo and shuffled off to Duderstadt in Lower Saxony, Germany to embark on a course of immunotherapy with dendritic cells – particularly those primed to target a 'non-functioning' receptor 'nf-P2X7' identified by Julian Barden at Biosceptre.
Put simply, all cells carry the P2X7 receptor which tell the cell when and how to 'die' when its time is up. Cancer cells however have a non-functioning version of this receptor. Bioscepter have identified this and created a treatment which allows cells to reactivate the receptor and cause cancer cell death. Brilliant! and it appears this may well be a generic cancer treatment rather than being specific to a cancer type – to date Biosceptre have identified the marker on more than 20 cancer types. Even more brilliant!
Additionally, Dr Neßelhut and his wonderful team use a combination of approaches to help control and eradicate the cancer cells. These include localised hyperthermia (Oncotherm – also now available in Sydney) combined with Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV) (also not yet available in Sydney) our normal cells can pretty well shrug off NDV but cancer cells are weakened or killed by the virus.
They also add Ozone and Zometa treatments all of which have little if any side effects. To date I have had a slight cold which may be from the NDV or may well just have been be a slight cold.
Other prescribed medications are:
Metformin 500mg x 3 times per day
Cimetidin 400mg 2 x per day
Q-10 x 2 cap
Vitamin D3 x 5 drops
Coriolus Mushroom x 2 capsues twice per day
Since coming off chemo and having fought to get hold of some Dexamethasone my appetite went from zero to voracious and I gained back some 4 kilos and counting – it's a strange world when you find yourself jealous of people's fat.
So this week the third treatment schedule looks like this:
Tuesday 12-1 Hyperthermia + Ozone therapy
Wednesday 12-1.00 Hyperthermia + NDV + Zometa
Thursday 12-1.00 Hyperthermia + Zometa
Thursday 3.00 DC Vaccine (nf-P2X7)
This will be followed by a CT scan in about 3 weeks time to see what, if any, effect the treatment has had. I still have to confirm where the scan will take place but it is likely that I will have an appointment with the NHS in London when we get back. The lovely GP in Wapping (who was refreshingly open to both conventional and DC therapy as legitimate) has requested an NHS appointment for me. It will be interesting to compare the approaches and treatment plans.
Right now I feel 'normal' – apart from a little swallowing discomfort at the beginning of eating which is a concern as it could represent tumour growth given the eight weeks off chemo – and people have stopped offering me their seats on tubes so happy with that!
Whatever the outcome I do believe my journey may help along the way in proving that immunology is a relevant and effective treatment for cancer and other diseases.
If anyone wants any other information feel free to get in touch.
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