Which Do You Want to Hear First? (You Decide!)

Bad News: because of my increasing baseline bone pain (see previous post), I've had to postpone my ultrasound home therapy, since it creates an inflammation response that is even more painful.

Good News: If I can get a prescription for either prednisone or dexamethasone (steroids), I can continue the ultrasound therapy, since these will suppress the inflammatory response without suppressing the cancer-killing activity of the ultrasound (this is how the therapy is carried out at the Dove Clinic in the UK for people, like me, with a heavy tumor load).

Bad News: Although my oncologist had previously recommended prednisone for me for unrelated reasons, I thought I would be able to get a prescription from her -- but now she no longer wants me to be on prednisone.

Good News: As a replacement for the prednisone she was going to recommend, my oncologist wants me to start on ProVenge, an anti-prostate cancer vaccine that's new and has had some success. (I received a personalized version of this vaccine when I was treated in Germany in 2007 and got a complete remission for eight months.)

Being a basically cheerful person, I will end with the good news! ;-)

Ow, This Thing Really Works!!

Here's the ultrasound machine that I have at home -- it's the same one that I was using at the Hope4Cancer clinic in Mexico.

Every week I dissolve three chlorophyll capsules in my mouth and wait 24 hours. Then I smear myself with olive oil and baste for 30 minutes...no, wait, I smear myself with olive oil and then jump in the bathtub! I then slowly rub the wand over the areas where there are tumors.

While I'm using the ultrasound wand, it's absolutely painless -- I actually can't feel a thing. Within four hours, though, it kicks up an inflammatory reaction in the areas where there are tumors -- my femur, pelvis, and spine. I feel some pain, depending on how long I applied the wand. I definitely have to work on my timing so that I do it for long enough to make a difference, but not too long to make the pain too intense!

Despite the pain, it's really good to know that the treatment actually has an effect, and that I can see such a quick feedback loop between something I do and the effect it has. For so many of the treatments (like the supplements I take, for instance), there's really no way to directly know if I'm having any kind of impact. With the sonodynamic treatment -- oh, you better believe I can feel when I've undergone the treatment!

The next step is to find a helper to use the wand on places I can't reach on my back, and to set up the bank of lights that will complement the ultrasound treatment in activating the chlorophyll inside the body.

A Bit of Science

Here's a couple of great articles about the effectiveness of the sonodynamic treatment. One of them has an exhaustive chronicle of what happened to each of the 116 patients that have been treated with this therapy at a clinic in the UK. (PDF files)

Photodynamic and Sonodynamic Therapy

Next Generation Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) and Sonodynamic Therapy (SDT)

It's the People That Count!

(more Tijuana photos by Liz here)

I'm completely loving the scene here in Tijuana! (or "TJ", as everyone here refers to it*) We're actually in Playas de Tijuana, separated from the rest of the city by a major highway and a mountain range -- so there's no problem with drug violence anywhere near here.

The scene at the beach across the street is wonderful. On nice days, it's filled with people -- all Mexicans, and all completely relaxed and having fun. We're only four blocks from San Diego, but it's an utterly different universe. The fresh air and the happy giggling is completely invigorating, and endlessly entertaining. We were lucky enough to be invited into a local home for Easter, and we had a blast.

Inside the clinic, I am thanking my lucky stars several times a day that I ended up here after all my searching. The difference is the people! Besides being complete sweethearts, both the doctors and nurses have plenty of time to be attentive and caring, as there are only four patients staying in the clinic at any one time. Both of the other sonodynamic therapy options that I investigated (in China and the UK) were outpatient, so I wouldn't have received anywhere near this level of care. On my first day here, the doctors discovered a urinary tract infection that I hadn't even known about, and it's now completely gone.

The nurses take my vital signs and check in on me round the clock. They've also been helping train Liz to administre the two shots (Goldenseal + vitamins, and antigen vaccine) that I'll continue once I return home. Most importantly, we've been well-trained in what will be necessary to continue the therapies (both sonodynamic + supplements) once we return to Berkeley. No other place I checked into has such a well-planned approach to follow-up care.

I'll put myself through eight more weeks of treatment at home, and then get a bone scan on schedule in mid-July (which I do every six months). That will give me a progress report on how I'm doing, and let me know how well the therapies have worked.

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* Given that the reference to Tijuana as "TJ" is universal...and considering how sleazy a reputation Tijuana has...I can't believe that anyone actually ended up naming a television show "T.J. Hooker"! Somewhere in Hollywood, an executive producer is still chuckling to themselves.

Day 3 -- Everything Under Way

The routine here is well underway. I waited 48 hours for the RaphaChlor chlorophyll capsules to lodge in my system, and now I am receiving all of the therapies:

• full-body hyperthermia (pictured above -- how do you like the pig-in-the-blanket look?)

• Indiba hyperthermia: one heated metal pad is underneath my body, and a heated meta disc is rubbed slowly over all the areas where I have tumors.

The main treatment that I've come for is the sonodynamic therapy, which comes in three parts:

• photodynamic therapy: part of the chlorophyll is activated near the surface of my body by a bed of daylight fluorescent bulbs hanging six inches above me -- I stay under these for an hour.

• laser therapy: a small laser wand is slowly rubbed over all affected areas of my body, and inserted rectally to activate my prostate (oooh!). This reaches more deeply than the visible light lengths can reach on their own and lasts about half an hour.

• ultrasound therapy: I lie in a tub of water, and an ultrasound wand is slowly passed over the affected areas of body for about 45 minutes. (pictured above with one of the great nurses here helping out.)
  

We also get three square meals a day of lovingly-prepared vegetarian food, and fruit & vegetable juices three times a day in between meals. But the most healing part of the routine so far are the doctors and nurses here -- I feel so completely taken care of! Everyone is a complete sweetheart, and they are extremely patient with my rudimentary Spanish.

¡Bienvenidos a México!

Today we arrived at the US border, 3 hours late after hitting tons of traffic in LA. I am always excited by that moment when the endless streatch of interstate (+ malls + suburbs + stores + restaurants) actually DOES come to an end and we have finally run out of US land to drive through.

Jesus (the driver) is there to take us across the border, and we cruise through Immigration and head across the mountains, away from the main part of Tijuana, toward Playas de Tijuana. On the way we chat with another couple from the clinic, he has prostate cancer as well. After 15 minutes of driving parallel to the border fence, we pull off by the bullfighting ring, and turn left to land at our little clinic -- it's directly across the street from the Pacific, and the view from our room is gorgeous! We can hear the crashing surf from our window, and our view is a riot of people and color and shops. From the instant I arrive I'm swarmed by doctors and nurses (there's a staff of 10 of them here, for only four patients! I give my medical history, hand over my records to be copied, and get checked out from head to toe. I already feel VERY taken care of here!

That night the nurse brings me 12 of the RaphaChlor capsules -- the special chlorophyll formulation that I will take which will be the center piece of the sonodynamic therapy. I'm instructed to let each one dissolve slowly underneath my tongue...in ABSOLUTE darkness so that the photosynthesis of each capsule isn't triggered. Sounds easy, but it takes an hour and a half of cowering underneath the covers, sucking on the capsules!

Going To Mexico!

OK, everything's set -- Liz and I are Going to Mexico next week!

I investigated the sonodynamic therapy (SDT) that Ralph Moss suggested at the clinic in Xi'an, China. It's an offshoot of photodynamic therapy, which is a fairly standard American therapy for surface cancers (like melanoma). SDT is a relatively new treatment that shows good results for prostate cancer (and bone metastases) that can't be reached very well with surface treatments. (See my earlier post for more details and a description of how it works; the link above is the best scientific description I've seen, and has case studies of 116 different patients that have been treated with SDT.)

Further investigation revealed that there are three places in the world that currently offer this treatment: the clinic in China (which moved over from Australia), the Dove Clinic in London, and the Hope4Cancer Institute in Tijuana.

They all use exactly the same sensitizing agent and treatment technique for sonodynamic therapy.

And I can *drive* to Tijuana!

What really sealed the deal was my conversation a couple of days ago with Dr. Tony Jimenez, the head doctor and researcher at the Institute. He's a nice guy from New Jersey who's intimately familiar with a lot of the best therapies that I've been researching, and has a great approach to the combination of treatments that I'll be receiving at the Institute. I liked him a lot, and you'll be hearing a lot more details of the treatment once we arrive.

I want to take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude for all of you that have helped to make this trip possible. I'm not fooling myself that this is any kind of "miracle cure", but it's a darned good shot at getting substantially better, and I couldn't be doing this without your incredibly generous help. Thank you so much!

a third possible treatment: IPT

I spoke with Dr. Dean at the Euro-Med Center in Scottsdale today about a treatment that I've become interested in checking out: insulin potentiation therapy (IPT).

Here's a great description of it:
http://www.euro-med.us/cancer-treatment/insulin-potentiation-therapy.cfm

short version: cancer cells LOVE glucose. In IPT therapy, you're given insulin, which lowers your blood sugar...all your cancer cells start crying out for more glucose! At that point you get a lot of glucose COMBINED with low-dose chemotherapy. The great advantage of this technique over standard chemotherapy is that it's a small enough dose that it does no harm to your immune system.

I'm trying to find someone that will give me a valid comparison between this treatment and the Chinese sonodynamic treatment I'm also investigating. Both treatments can often (though not always) take patients all the way to remission -- but even with remissions, you have to go back in for periodic re-treatments. I'm prepared for that; my understanding is that cancer is a chronic condition that I'll live with for the rest of my life. It would be a lot easier to return frequently to an IPT clinic in the States than the SDT clinic in China!

Update 3/8:

After researching the IPT therapy further, it looks like it's much more appropriate for early stage cancers. I'm going to keep looking for another multi-therapy clinic in the US so that it will be easy to travel to. I'll be investigating the various Mexican clinics -- Ralph Moss has written a report evaluating the various treatments in the major clinics there, which will be helpful.

*great* conversation with Ralph Moss! (part 1)

(In this part: Sonodynamic therapy)

I had a *great* conversation with Ralph Moss this week. (He's the professional cancer researcher (http://www.cancerdecisions.net ) who pointed me to my original treatment with Dr. Thaller in Germany, which bought me a remission for several months early last year.)

For the past year, Dr. Moss has been traveling to clinics around the world, and has sent several of his clients to new treatments in China and Germany that seem very impressive.

The first one, sonodynamic therapy, is an ofshoot of photodynamic therapy, which has already ben approved by the FDA for use in some cancers. Sonodynamic therapy can go deeper, to get some cancers (like my bone metastases) that aren't easily reachable with light.

From what I understand, it consists of ingesting a compound made from deep-sea algae that photosenthysize through vibration, since no light penetrates their environment. The compound is designed to be taken up specifically by cancer cells. After your body absorbs it for 24 hours, you sit in a bathtub and the doctors turn on ultrasound for an hour and a half. The treatment lasts for a couple of weeks.

The results are really amazing, even for incurable metastatic cancers. Dr. Moss has tracked several clients who have used this therapy and has seen them get good results. Here's an abstract of an article talking about the good clinical results: http://bit.ly/quJtw

Some other references on SDT:

Here's the blog of a young couple from Portland that went to Xi'an, China for the treatment. Sounds relatively painfree.

http://www.roundhousemedia.net/china/round1.html (start at bottom)

2nd page of entries -- http://www.roundhousemedia.net/china/index.html (start at bottom)

brief description of SDT aimed specifically at prostate cancer patients (scroll down to "What is SPDT, PDT?" -- http://www.prostate90.com/prostate_cancer/Metastasis.html

website of Dr. Mitchell in Australia who has moved his treatment centers to China:
www.opalclinic.com/PDTSDT.htm