Success Stories
During the past few months, I've read several studies and will share more about them in future entries, but today I want to focus on one which studied how patients would respond to Bexxar as the first and only treatment. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in February 2005, and they showed that 59% of the patients remained disease free after a 5 year followup period. Further, it showed that Bexxar was more successful when used earlier in treatment rather than after several types of chemotherapy had failed.
I wondered if any of the patients in that study were still disease free, but I had no way of finding out because privacy laws prevent my getting information about other patients. But recently, a woman whose name is Teresa, contacted me. As she began to tell me about her treatment, I asked her if she was in that particular study and she said yes! Coincidentally, she lives across town, and over a lovely lunch last week, she told me the whole story with laughter and tears.
Teresa was a young mother when she was diagnosed in July 1996. Her doctors talked with her about a clinical trial using a type of treatment which targets cancerous cells. At the time, there was little information about it, but Teresa's husband is a scientist, and after discussing the mechanism of this drug with the doctors, he concluded that it made better scientific sense than standard chemotherapy.
In September 1996, two months after her diagnosis, Teresa took Bexxar and has lived a full, healthy cancer-free life ever since. To this day, she's so glad that her boys, ages 2 and 7 at the time, never had to watch her go through months of chemotherapy. Imagine - two months from diagnosis to the end of treatment - and more than ten years of health!
Meeting Teresa was so uplifting for me, and I was still dancing on air later that evening when I got yet another inspirational call from a man who was also in the study! Two in one day! Diagnosed in 1998, he lives in northern Michigan. At the time, his doctor had read about the study and suggested that he might be a candidate for it, which indeed he was. He laughed when he told me about taking the drug while watching the Redwings win the Stanley Cup that year. But then his voice broke when he told me that his son was only a year old when he was diagnosed, and he was so afraid that his son would never know him. He had to collect himself before cheerfully telling me that he now enjoys taking his son to hockey practice twice a week.
In the course of a single day, I had the privilege of listening to two people who have been healthy for 8-1/2 and 10 years because of RIT. They are examples of the tremendous healing potential of this treatment, a treatment that takes only one week to complete. They shine as such bright beacons of hope for all of us who have fought this disease, and both expressed their hope that RIT will soon become the standard of care for the type of lymphoma they had (follicular). In an email to me later, Teresa added, "RIT adheres to the physician's precept, 'First do no harm.' "
I couldn't agree more.
Betsy
Comments
do u think if you catch it early and do the chemo that it helps. also how long is the Life line on this disease.
Posted by: Mazie | February 2, 2007 1:21 AM