I received an e-mail in which a woman wanted to know what kind of treatments could save her husband from this type of cancer. Rather than forward the mail out, I thought I’d post it here hoping someone might know, and then I could let this lady know. Any takers?
Well, first off, I suppose I should ask: What is a “nonsmall cell”? Amoebas are many times larger than any other one-celled organism, or any cell in the human body save an ovum; would an amoeba or an ovum be a “nonsmall cell”?
I have no clue, but I was just hoping someone had heard about it. 
“I sink, therefore I swam.”
Small cell is slower moving/spreading, and harder to treat. Nonsmall cell is more aggressive, and responds better to treatment.
What planet is your friend from? There is no cure. If you had one for her, you would give it to everyone and make a gazillion dollars.
If her husband has nonsmall cell cancer, tell her to pursue aggressive chemotherapy, follow up with radiation, and get his affairs in order, because if the cancer gets the upper hand, death is usually swift.
There are lots of different chemotherapies, but its pretty much a crap shoot. There are excellent anti-nausea drugs available to counter the effects. They are very expensive, if they dont have insurance dont scrimp on the chemo, just use plain old Gravol if necessary to save a few bucks.
Keep in mind that chemo is really bad stuff, its basically poison, just not enough to kill you, and sadly, you cant stay on it forever, so while nonsmall cell will respond to chemo, it will almost always bounce right back when treatments cease.
If at all possible, they should begin radiation ASAP after chemo to try to head off the ‘bounce-back’ effect.
She should talk to a nutritionist about his diet, cancer feeds more off some foods than others. Iron if I recall correctly, is cancer’s fave. There is an excellent book my Mom recommends called : 50 Things to do When You Find Out You Have Cancer. (or something like that). And talk to a pharmacist before starting any vitamin program…some stuff will react against the chemo.
Tell her to get ALL his prescriptions at the SAME pharmacy. This is VERY IMPORTANT! The computers will often flag a dangerous combination of drugs, as long as they areall filled at the same place. A drug interaction is so likely, you cant imagine. He will soon be on many many pills, a good pharmacist is worth his weight in gold.
Good luck, I hope they beat the odds.
Please accept my apologies, I had that backwards.
Small cell is the more insidious of the two, and responds well to treatment. Non small cell is slower moving, and harder to treat.
This is an excellent simple link to information on non small cell cancer:
http://www.oncologynet.com/nsccalung.htm
Non-small cell lung cancer includes several histologic (appearance under the microscope) types of cancer. These include squamous cell carcinoma, adenocarcinoma, large cell carcinoma.
The reason these are all lumped together as “Non-Small Cell Lung CAncer” (NSCLC) is that the specific histolgic type provides little useful information as to what kinds of treatment the tumor may respond to, and how likely a good response might be.
Major predictive factors include tumor size, closeness to the center of the chest, number & location of involved lymph nodes, and the presence of metastatic tumors elsewhere.
Treatment first of all involves consideration of surgery, which can be curative in some cases. If surgery fails, or there is no chance of a cure, treatment with radiation, or anticancer drugs (chemotherapy) can be given, but is generally considered “palliative” (given in the hope of improving quality of life and/or delaying life-threatening complications.
Patients with good responses to chemo and/or radiation may live 12-24 months after diagnosis, but many patients do not have such a good result.
Here are some sites: http://cancernet.nci.nih.gov/wyntk_pubs/lung.htm (from NCI)
http://www.mayohealth.org/mayo/9706/htm/lung.htm (from Mayo)
http://www.lungusa.org/diseases/lungcanc.html (from American Lung Assn)
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.