I Made the Team

Well I finally heard back from the doctor in Maryland. (there was a slight delay because of the storm)I have qualified for the immunotherapy trial. So to make a long story short the idea of the clinical trial is that they remove a cancer tumor and grow the t-cells (these are like tumor fighting cells) Once the cells are grown you are given chemo to suppress your immune system. Following chemo you are given your cells and interluekin-2 (this kind of puts your t-cells on steroids). If everything works out perfectly these T-cells attack the cancerous tumors and and ideally prevents future cancer growth. Its pretty similar to the way a bone marrow transplant would work.
So what are the downfalls of this clinical trial? Like any kind of medication or medical treatment there are side effects. The first one is the risk of infection during the chemo. The doctor said that just about everyone gets a fever and ends up on antibiotics. This is obviously a bigger deal for someone on chemo that is unable to fight off the infection. Another problem is the interluekin-2, come to find although this drug does great things it also does horrible things.The doctor said that although the protocol allows for 11-12 doses of the interleukin-2 no one gets that many. He said they give the medication until the patient starts experiencing the side effect. ex) difficulty breathing, kidney failure, pulmonary edema, low blood pressure. The good news is all these side effects are reversible. Its just kind of scary to think that this medication sends people to the ICU. The other bad news is that they wont be able to start the transfusions until the middle of January so that leaves another 2 1/2 months with no treatment.
So in my situation the doctor is planning on surgically removing the cancerous nodes from my neck. Those will be used to grow the t-cells. The tumor on my spleen will be used to monitor and measure if the immunotherapy protocol is effective.
So far there has been 4 people who have done this clinical trial 1.) a female with cervical cancer who showed no response to treatment. 2.) a female with cervical cancer whose first 2 scans showed reduce in tumor size but is now showing suspicion for tumor progression. 3.) a female with cervical cancer, this one is fairly recent but the first scan showed dramatic tumor regression. 4.) a male with a neck tumor that is also fairly new and has shown tumor regression after the first scan.
So now I'm back to waiting until I hear from the nurses that will schedule me for clinic and surgery will hopefully be able to be done in the same visit.