I got my first dose of Cytoxan, Fludarabine, and Rituxan today. We ran out of time so I only got a little Rituxan today. Interesting initial side effects. A flushed face for a few minutes, a tightening in the throat (like a Darth Vader discipline), then aching in the body like when you have the flu and you ache all over. I went home and then got pretty dizzy and had a small amount of dry heaves. I ate some cooked broccoli (yum, yum!) and seem to be doing better. My oncologist says that because of my overall excellent health, I can reduce my treatment regimen from five days a week to three days a week. (It must have been from all that bacon, cheese, pizza, and circus peanuts that I've eaten over the years!) In the words of the famous American philosopher, Grace Slick (Jefferson Airplane), "Just think, all those preservatives may be preserving you!" I just have to drink lots and lots of water to flush out the uric acid created by the mass murder of thousands of B cell lymphocytes. And people thought Stalin was bad! If I don’t flush my system, the high amount of uric acid can cause kidney failure. And we sure don’t want that! I ask if my changed eating habits can have a positive effect on remitting the lymphoma. He said no, but then went on to cite some longitudinal studies of families and eating habits in small Scandinavian towns, where it was discovered pretty much that, “You are what you eat,” or more likely, “You are what your ancestors ate.”
Follicular lymphoma is one of the most common types of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. More is understood about the abnormalities that occur in the lymphocytes leading to this type of lymphoma than in many other lymphomas. A hallmark of this type of lymphoma is the presence of too much of a protein called Bcl-2. A gene called Bcl-2 produces this protein, and the excess Bcl-2 allows the lymphocyte to live longer than is usual. Because the abnormal lymphocytes fail to die as happens during normal cell turnover, too many lymphocytes accumulate, eventually forming lymph node tumors. The reason for the overproduction of Bel-2 is also understood. All humans have 23 chromosomes-46 in all-that contain many, many genes. The genes are made up of DNA, and each contains the fundamental information necessary for the manufacture of a protein. The process responsible for making a protein from message contained in a gene is normally regulated very closely in order to prevent too much of a protein being produced. Sometimes genes can get moved from one chromosome to another, an event called translocation. In the follicular lymphomas, the gene for the production of Bcl-2 protein (called Bcl-2) gets moved from chromosome 18 to chromosome 14. On chromosome 14, Bcl-2 is placed next to another gene that gives it instructions to keep producing Bcl-2 protein. As mentioned previously, the Bcl-2 protein prevents the lymphocyte from dying at the right time. Normal lymphocytes are programmed to die at some point during their normal lifespan. This built-in death program is called apoptosis (programmed cell death) and is essentially a cell suicide program. If this process is blocked (e.g., by having too much Bcl-2), lymphocytes accumulate and lymphoma may result.
And some people believe that this level of evolution is a result of natural selection as explained by Darwin. Nice try Darwin, but I’d wager that even Darwin, seeing this level of information about the body today would reject his own theory! That means that people who ascribe to this theory probably believe Al Gore’s proposal that the polar ice caps will be gone in five years (as stated in a syndicated AP news article in hundreds of papers in November 2009). Ha ha!
Don’t even try to tell me there is no God!
Don’t even try.
More to come. . .
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5 comments:
Thank you Garvin for the biology lesson--and the testimony derived therefrom. Dale and I are reading all of your posts.
What a cool picture of you. I love it. What is funny is that when I initially went to the clinic because of abdominal pains, the PA (before the blood results) initially thought that I may have diverticulitis. I immediately thought of Dale and his problem with that.
First-I read the first half and last half, fell asleep during the bio class (never could stay awake during those classes).
Second- Now you really are "General Nuke'em" your body is receiving nuclear bombs!
Lastly-As for your comment on cancer and dying your hair as mom argued with me this morning: a World Health Organization panel, reported that there is not enough evidence to conclude that occasional personal use of hair coloring raises the risk of cancer.
This new report, published in the April, 2008, issue of Lancet Oncology, is the first scientific word on the subject since 2005, when Spanish researchers reported that their review of 79 studies from 11 countries yielded no strong evidence of a link between hair dye and cancer risk. The only connection the Spanish team observed was the possibility of a slight increase in the risks of leukemia and multiple myeloma, but they concluded that the causal effect was too weak to be a major concern.
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Earlier, researchers at Yale University found that long-term use of dark hair dye by women who began coloring their hair before 1980 may increase the risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. No such risk was seen among women who began dyeing their hair after 1980. Here, the difference may be due to the elimination of coal-tar-derived ingredients used in the older products that are known carcinogens. The Yale study was published in the Jan. 15, 2004, issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.
In Conclusion- Dad if you lose your, then bring on the FLAMING RED DYE! HA HA!
Glad to hear that the chemo treatment was not traumatic. As I said before, each person responds to chemo differently so one never knows what the reaction will be until after he has mainlined it. Even then, it could still take days for the side effects to show up.
As long as two people can receive the same information and come up with two very different conclusions, there is a strong possibility that Darwin might still conclude that natural selection is still at work. One could make the case that gene translocation is a genetic experiment (that if viable and a significant improvement could be viewed as an evolutionary change).
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