Renal Cell Carcinoma - Cancer Message Board

hopingforacure · 08-06-2006, 12:00 AM

Hi everyone,
This could be a bit of a long story, so hang in there. Sorry if it becomes too lengthy.

I have an uncle, who is like a brother to me. His mom who is my grandmother and I have been very close all my life.

He started out with cancer in the kidney about a year and a half ago or so. They later found it was in his bones, liver and lungs.

In March of this year they ruled out it was in his brain, so we were safe there.

He has had one weeks wortk of IL-2 and it helped the cancer in the sense that there was no change, no growth.

However, about 2 months after his IL-2 he awoke one morning, went to stand up and just collapsed. Thinking he had a stroke they took him to the hospital where they later took him by pegasus to the University hospital.

Come to find out the cancer has mestasised(sp?) to the brain. He has at least 4 tumors, and a few of them have bled causing paralysis on the right side of his body.

Otherwise hes been doing well, he had been getting around fine, went back to work, he was happy, optimistic and now this happens. My heart just hurts so bad to see him like this.

Right now they are doing radiation to the brain to try to decrease the size of the tumors to help him to regain some use of his right side.

Has anyone else been through this, and if so what kind of prognosis are we looking at here? No doctor has come out and said well he doesnt have long, anything of the sort. I am going over Monday though and as his emergency contact will be getting some answers. I have plenty of questions written down.

Guess I will close this post out, Im just very sad that cancer is taking so many lives. Ive never been this close to someone with this killer before. It hurts ,it really hurts.

shnswms · 08-06-2006, 09:25 AM

Cancer is a terrible disease. I'll be honest as possible. Stage 4 metastic kidney cancer that has spread to so many organs has a poor prognosis. It is his decision whether he wants to continue treatment or not. You have to look at quality of life versus quantity and decide which is more important at this point. There are stage 4 survivors of every type of cancer. All hope is not lost. You didn't mention his age. Good luck to him and your family.

hopingforacure · 08-07-2006, 09:49 AM

Sorry I failed to mentionm his age, he is 44.

JennColorado · 11-03-2006, 02:37 PM

My dad was just diagnosed with this... any advice anyone can give would be great!!!

yankee1 · 11-04-2006, 08:50 AM

There is a paper I read recently that was published by the Head of Molecular Genetics of the Cleveland Clinic. It found that an old anti-malarial drug called Atabrine(quinacrine) was extremely useful. Cancer turns off a natural defense mechanism all of our cells have against DNA damage, called Apoptosis. In 90% of the cancers, it appears that the cancer cells turn this function off and the cancer multiplies. This scientist, Andrei Gudov, found out why the cancer cell's are able to do this and found that quinacrine will totally turn off the cancer cell's ability to turn off apoptosis. In fact, in the study he published the quinacrine worked fabulously and actually allowed the cancer cells in renal carcinoma to have that defense mechanism to turn back on and the cells died. It also worked perfectly in human kidney cancer tumors that were kept alive in petrie dishes. What is cool about this drug is that your doctor could prescribe it for you since it is approved as an anti-malarial drug. It is oral and will have impact in 3-4 weeks. The dose is 300mg a day for 1 week and 100 mg a day for several months. There are only modest side effects. Every service man in WWII that fought in the pacific has taken this pill. Cleveland Biolabs is actually conducting a phase 2 study of this in prostate and renal carcinoma at the Cleveland Clinic. I suggest you try it. It really looks like a breakthrough and you can get it legally.