I spent the last three days in Seattle - mainly for a visit with Dr Paul Nghiem at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. This was for a second opinion and was approved by Kaiser Permanente. Kaiser will not pay for further meetings with Dr Nghiem, but I was put into his research group and they will continue to work with me.
Dr Nghiem seems to be the authority on Merkel Cell Cancer on the west coast. He has 700 patients. I would assume mostly on an advisory capacity.
Our main question was "Chemo and Radiation or just Radiation alone". He felt that at this point chemo could possibly do more harm than good. I haven't discussed this at Kaiser yet, but it made sense to me.
We asked him about a mushroom study done at Bastyr University in Kenmore WA, and he said he's heard some positive things about that and it certainly wouldn't hurt to take mushroom capsules. He gave me a starter supply.
They took about about a pint of blood samples and with that will develop an antibody base line for me. They can tell then from blood samples in the future if my cancer has reappeared elsewhere long before a pet or cat scan would do so. Hope I understood all that correctly.
The bottom line is I have about a 50/50 chance of getting this stopped with my current surgery and radiation treatments. If it appears again, then we go after it again. The hope is it appears in an operable place. It could appear anywhere on the body (including my brain - and that would not be good).
I see my radiologist at Kaiser next Tuesday, and I would assume we'd get the radiaton started immediately.
Signing off - Jim
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