Heebee jeebees!!!!

Do you ever wonder about new cancer treatments and their potential side effects? As medical research capabilities advance, so do the weird things they do to our bodies. Surgery used to be where they cut you open and take out the bad things. Now they leave little markers behind or radiate you (intraoperative radiation) while you are sleeping.

I just found out that herceptin is not a medication in the sense that its something your body absorbs and uses. It is nanotechnology- meaning it is a created little thing that is infused into your body where I assume it decays and goes away.

Nano particles sometimes are used as carriers of medicine but I hope  they leave your body asap. I mean what if they stick around and hang out in your liver or something. What kind of problems might they cause later????

I have a surgical marker implanted in my left breast to prevent confusion on the part of radiologists when they look at mammogram readings to say 'this part isn't cancer so you can ignore all this little disaster'. When they put it in I wasn't concerned.... but now as I think about it, will it ever rot or decay? Now it kind of gives me the heebee jeebees that it is still there.

What else do I have in my body? Not much but as new research comes down the pipeline, I hope nothing gets left behind.  

Heebee jeebees!!!!

Do you ever wonder about new cancer treatments and their potential side effects? As medical research capabilities advance, so do the weird things they do to our bodies. Surgery used to be where they cut you open and take out the bad things. Now they leave little markers behind or radiate you (intraoperative radiation) while you are sleeping.

I just found out that herceptin is not a medication in the sense that its something your body absorbs and uses. It is nanotechnology- meaning it is a created little thing that is infused into your body where I assume it decays and goes away.

Nano particles sometimes are used as carriers of medicine but I hope  they leave your body asap. I mean what if they stick around and hang out in your liver or something. What kind of problems might they cause later????

I have a surgical marker implanted in my left breast to prevent confusion on the part of radiologists when they look at mammogram readings to say 'this part isn't cancer so you can ignore all this little disaster'. When they put it in I wasn't concerned.... but now as I think about it, will it ever rot or decay? Now it kind of gives me the heebee jeebees that it is still there.

What else do I have in my body? Not much but as new research comes down the pipeline, I hope nothing gets left behind.  

Progress with a certain degree of ickiness

Would you walk around with wires sticking out of the top of your head which is covered in bandages? I am not as concerned about how I look but the idea of wires sticking out of my head. And you have to change the transducers every three or four days. Hence the ick factor.

Glioblastomas are nasty brain tumors, the type that killed Senator Ted Kennedy. They are not easily treatable. These new devices use electromagnetic fields to control the tumor cells.

"The sophisticated system involves covering a shaved scalp with insulated electrical transducers, which transform electricity into electromagnetic energy. The transducer devices are affixed to the skin with wide overlapping bandages, giving the appearance of a high-tech shower cap. 

Electromagnetic fields — generated from electricity produced via a 6-pound battery pack that patients carry on their backs — pass through the skull and brain tissue, and target rapidly reproducing tumor cells, disrupting their delicate process of cell division.

The electromagnetic fields don’t damage the brain’s healthy neurons and anatomical structures because those structures are not undergoing cell division. The fields exert force on proteins — which become electrically charged when the tumor cell is in the process of dividing — and that halts the cell division and destroys the cancer cells."

So you have to carry around a six pound battery pack. That alone would slow me down with my bad back. The other problem is it costs, brace yourself, $21,000 each month. And currently Medicare and many insurers won't pay for it.

However the manufacturer expects, but is not guaranteed, FDA approval in the next year or so. But there is no guarantee of any insurance coverage in the future. To me there is the ick factor and the idea of big brother watching what you are thinking through your brain cells...

Progress with a certain degree of ickiness

Would you walk around with wires sticking out of the top of your head which is covered in bandages? I am not as concerned about how I look but the idea of wires sticking out of my head. And you have to change the transducers every three or four days. Hence the ick factor.

Glioblastomas are nasty brain tumors, the type that killed Senator Ted Kennedy. They are not easily treatable. These new devices use electromagnetic fields to control the tumor cells.

"The sophisticated system involves covering a shaved scalp with insulated electrical transducers, which transform electricity into electromagnetic energy. The transducer devices are affixed to the skin with wide overlapping bandages, giving the appearance of a high-tech shower cap. 

Electromagnetic fields — generated from electricity produced via a 6-pound battery pack that patients carry on their backs — pass through the skull and brain tissue, and target rapidly reproducing tumor cells, disrupting their delicate process of cell division.

The electromagnetic fields don’t damage the brain’s healthy neurons and anatomical structures because those structures are not undergoing cell division. The fields exert force on proteins — which become electrically charged when the tumor cell is in the process of dividing — and that halts the cell division and destroys the cancer cells."

So you have to carry around a six pound battery pack. That alone would slow me down with my bad back. The other problem is it costs, brace yourself, $21,000 each month. And currently Medicare and many insurers won't pay for it.

However the manufacturer expects, but is not guaranteed, FDA approval in the next year or so. But there is no guarantee of any insurance coverage in the future. To me there is the ick factor and the idea of big brother watching what you are thinking through your brain cells...