new immunotherapy treatments next week!

I'm psyched today -- I just received a detailed description of the new immunotherapy treatment that I'm going to start at the Center for Wellness near Santa Cruz next week.

Immunotherapy is what I received when I was in Germany back in November of '07 that worked really, really well on the metastases I had at that time. The intention is to strengthen your own immune system so that it acquires the power (and good sense!) to attack your cancer cells, just like it does when cancer cells pop up as a matter of course throughout our lives. (Interestingly, this is exactly the *opposite* approach taken with chemo and radiation, where the immune system is battered along with the cancer!)

The treatment will be under the supervision of the Center for Wellness, the same place where I've received really excellent ayurvedic care for the past few months. After a BIG swing around the research circle (more on that in future posts), I've come back to these guys because they have a LOT of treatment tricks up their sleeves. They have a lot of international connections, and I've been impressed with their determination to create a treatment plan for me that mimics the best of what I received in Germany -- at a fraction of the cost ($3900 for the initial six days of treatment, as compared to $16,000 for one week of treatment in Germany.) The treatment is also set up in a way that lets me do 90% of the treatment at home, so I think I can still keep my job. I'm really looking forward to this and have a good feeling about it!