Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center Update 1

Karen and I made it back home last night after about 7 hours on the road, for the second time in two days. The drive was pretty easy for me, but was hard on Karen, particularly when driving on poorly maintained roads. Our Explorer is a safe vehicle that will get us to the destination in any weather, but it’s not the most gentle of rides, even when you’re well. The only hiccup in our trip up was a bit of bad gasoline, but some STP took care of that for us. Karen slept most of the way up and down, except for bumps in the road, and for restroom breaks.

The visit to Roswell Park seemed worthwhile. They are willing to allow Karen into one of their trials, as long as she qualifies. The first and best option is a special T-CEL trial that uses her own cells to fight the cancer. They would extract certain cells, fine tune them to attack a specific cancer protein, grow more of them, and inject them back into her. This only works if the patient’s cells have specific characteristics, so they are running some lab tests right now to evaluate whether she is a candidate. About 50% of applicants are eligible. Fingers crossed.

If that trial isn’t available, they may have another option, but there isn’t an opening for quite some time. They preemptively put her on the waiting list for that trial.

We should know late next week if she qualifies. In the mean time she gets a short break from any treatment. Walking any distance has become hard for Karen, and she’s having trouble keeping food down. Her immune system has weakened, but she’s not really feeling up for visits or going into the public right now anyway. Fortunately, she has her comfy bed and therapy cat right now.

It’s a rough time for Karen in a wide variety of ways. Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts.