CLOSE CALLA Doctor’s Encounter With Cancer
And The Test That Saved My Life
by
John M. Friedberg, M.D.
email: doctor@johnfriedberg.com
Last revised November 6, 2011
FOREWORD
There are some things we can only experience for ourselves.
Very few who have not had cancer themselves would believe how little is known about treatment and how ineffective most of it is.
As this becomes evident we are dying. It is too late for most.
In my case, my chest was ravaged by metastatic kidney cancer, my red blood cells were mysteriously gone and the medication I had obediently taken for three months had done nothing. I was not expected to live.
As a doctor I was accustomed to seeing sensitivity testing and assumed it was done wherever possible. For example throat swabs are routinely plated on nutrient gels such as agar which are embedded with discs of different antibiotics. The halos of bacterial death around the discs tell us which is the best choice. We do the same for bladder infections. The tests are called “culture and sensitivity” and the words are a medical meme.
Amazingly, culturing cancer cells and testing for sensitivity to cancer drugs are not routine nor is such testing paid for and the principled individuals offering such testing are dismissed as “not ready for prime time.” As a result of such arrogant dismissals, these obvious and rational tests are almost impossible to locate and obtain in the finite time of a cancer diagnosis.
Good fortune led me to Robert Nagourney, M.D., an oncologist who does drug sensitivity testing on samples of patients’ tumors. Just in the nick of time, almost four months after diagnosis, I made a “pilgrimage” in October from my home in Oakland to his office in Long Beach, California.
The test led Dr. Nagourney to recommend three conventional anti-cancer drugs in combination. None of them are drugs of choice for kidney cancer; none of them would have been tried for me.
In two weeks on treatment my chest x-ray, the effusion, the pleural metastases, had cleared dramatically and my blood count was improving and I was feeling better. As of this writing, ten months after diagnosis and six months on treatment, my chest metastases have “melted away,” and my improvement, according to Gary Cecchi, M.D., my local oncologist is amazing.
The tumor remains, unchanged in size. Surgical removal is an option.
I have no assurance that the army of “renegade immortals,” the kidney cancer cells, won’t come back tomorrow. I may be living on borrowed time. I am choosing to use it to tell my story.
Because even though I’m a physician, I suspect my encounter with cancer is not that different from the experience of many others.
Except, perhaps, for the outcome.
The public needs to know about the important work being done by a handful of physicians like Dr. Nagourney who are routinely saving lives with customized cancer therapy.
Next: Chapter 1: Intimations