Category Archives: After Cancer

After Cancer, Alternative Cancer Treatment, Living with Cancer

After Cancer Treatment – For Many, Living with Cancer Includes Psychotherapy to Heal

Can I Live With Cancer?
Psychological Healing

We all have dreams, fantasies, ambitions, goals. A cancer diagnosis for ourselves or our loved ones is not a part of any of these things. No one includes a devastating illness in the mix when they are charting their course to a happy and fulfilled life. But for millions of people, they must find meaning, purpose, and joy after cancer treatment and as they adjust to living with cancer. It is part of Issels® Integrative Immuno-Oncology’s comprehensive treatment method to help our patients live both a long and fulfilled life.

Struggling after surviving

Cindy Finch is a columnist and self-proclaimed Professional Cancer Survivor. She shares how frustrating it was for her to tell her oncologist about panic attacks, mood swings, and sleeplessness, only to be dismissed and told to be grateful she was alive. While Cindy is grateful to the medical community for helping her overcome her cancer. She feels they should do more to help patients with the mental and emotional trauma it can bring.

Psychotherapy can help

For many cancer survivors, the time after cancer treatment is one of the most difficult of their lives. Psychosocial care from trained professionals who understand the needs of cancer patients is essential. If your treatment facility does not have this help available, be sure you find proper psychosocial health care and help spread the word about this important need.

At Issels® Integrative Immuno-Oncology, we specialize in personalized non-toxic treatment therapies and cancer vaccine protocols that utilize your own body’s immune system to combat cancer and prevent recurrences. We understand the importance and value of you. Contact us to learn more about our safe and effective methods.

After Cancer, Cancer Care Tips

Tips for Beating Fatigue Triggered by Cancer Treatment

Talk to Your Care Team About Fatigue
Talk to Your Care Team About Fatigue

Fighting cancer is a full-time job that consumes every available bit of your energy. While your treatment is designed to assist you, it can intensify your feelings of fatigue. Lack of energy seeps into your emotional state, making it difficult to maintain a positive attitude.

You don’t have to resign yourself to feeling tired. Enlist the help of your support network in following these suggestions to rebuild your stores of energy.

• Let your healthcare provider know about your fatigue. He has experience dealing with the situation so he can offer ideas that have successfully helped other patients.

• Exercise may sound counterintuitive, but it’s a great way to boost your energy along with your strength and emotional state of mind. It doesn’t have to be a formal workout. A short walk or any other physical activity is beneficial.

• Follow a nutritional diet to keep your system in balance and build your strength.

• If you are having difficulty sleeping at night, spend time relaxing before you go to bed. Make your room as comfortable as possible and follow a regular sleeping schedule so your body adapts.

• Cancer treatment can make you feel isolated and alone. If you haven’t already, join a support group. Knowing that others have experienced similar fatigue is comforting.

• Sometimes you just have to accommodate your tiredness and take a rest. After a while you’ll find a balance and know when to keep going and when to relax.

Our healthcare providers consider fatigue and other factors of your individual case to personalize your course of treatment. Contact us to learn more about the resources we offer to help you win your fight.

After Cancer, Cancer Survivors

Cancer Super-Survivors Give Us All Hope

Cancer Survivor
Cancer Survivor

Today’s array of immunotherapy  treatments are offering cancer victims something they’ve been robbed of for some time– a fighting chance. Read on to discover more about super-survivors and the treatments that are not only putting immunotherapy in the spotlight, but transforming the future of cancer treatment.

Super-survivor stats:

  • Joseph Rick
    Rick’s advanced melanoma metastasized throughout his body. Years of the side effects of chemo and radiation left a lasting impression, but did not cure his cancer. When doctors gave up hope, Rick turned to a trial vaccine immunotherapy. A year later his tumors had shrunk 50 percent, and after three years he experienced remission.
  • Tom Telford
    A tumor on Telford’s small intestine spread to his liver and kidneys following surgery and chemo, however Telford is still alive nine years later following treatment with immunotherapy.
  • Richard Logan
    Logan’s skin melanoma metastasized to his lung and liver. His cancer has been stabilized five years following treatment with checkpoint inhibitors, a form of immunotherapy.

Treating the immune system, not cancer:
Harnessing the power of the immune system, immunotherapy is charting new territory. It offers a chance at long-term survival, particularly in advanced cancers, with developments in treatment technology such as:

  • Checkpoint inhibitors
    Certain immune system components can prevent immune system warriors, T-cells, from attacking tumors. Checkpoint inhibitors block these components, putting T-cells back in the fight.
  • T-cell therapy
    This therapy involves genetically modifying certain T-cells outside the body, creating “CAR T cells”, which are then re-infused back into the body to attack targets on the surface of cancer cells.
  • And many more therapies both in use and under investigation.

Want to be a super-survivor? Contact Issels® today.

After Cancer, Living with Cancer, Stress Management, Testimonials

Three Tips to Understanding your Cancer’s Prognosis

Understanding Cancer
Understanding Cancer

Cancer is the giant bugaboo that eventually invades everyone’s life if they live long enough. Still, if caught early and treated agressively, a prognosis of cancer is not necessarily an untimely death sentence. Here are the most important things to know about your prognosis once you have defintively been diagnosed with cancer:

It is Fact Based

Though it may mystify the patient to some extent, a doctor’s cancer prognosis is thoroughly grounded in his own and his peer’s medical experience. The doctor will look at such things as the type and location of the cancer, its metastatic stage – that is, how much it has actually spread – and the cancer’s grade – how abnormal it looks and how likely it is to spread even more.

It’s Mostly Statistics

While Mark Twain facetiously opined that there are “lies, damn lies and statistics,” the actual truth is that stats really do tell you a lot about your prognosis. By analyzing various factors such as the specific characteristics of the patient’s disease, the available treatment options and any other health issues, the doctor will make an educated guess as to what will happen.

It is Not Completely Certain

While your prognosis is your doctor’s “best guess” as to the likely course and outcome of your disease, it is by no means 100% certain. Remaining positive throughout the process is always the best medicine.

As you can see, a prognosis is as much art as it is science and the best doctors combine both when making a prognosis. For more detailed information, please contact us at Issels® or you can reach us directly at 1-888-437-7357.

After Cancer, Cancer Survivors, News

Researchers Harness the HIV Virus to Fight Leukemia

New Cancer Research Is In the News
New Cancer Research Is In the News

The initials “HIV” are rarely associated with positive health news. In an amazing breakthrough, researchers at Penn Medicine have had success using the HIV virus to treat patients with incurable leukemia.

Dr. Carl June and his team at the University of Pennsylvania Health System have been working on the therapy for 20 years. The key to this treatment is the characteristic of the HIV virus to insert new genes into cells.

The procedure begins with billions of T-cells being removed from a patient’s body. A disabled form of HIV is then used to reprogram the T-cells, rendering them capable of recognizing, targeting and killing the cancer. At this point they are returned to the patient’s body to perform their mission.

According to Dr. June, once the cancer has been treated these “killer cells” become dormant, returning to action only if the cancer recurs. Out of 12 patients who have received the treatment, nine are in full or partial remission.

One of the successful cases is that of Marshall Jensen, a newlywed and young parent from Utah who was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. So far, Dr. June’s treatment has accomplished what nearly three years of traveling the country for various surgeries and procedures could not.

What’s next for Dr. June and his team? They hope to be able to adapt this therapy to treat other forms of cancer. Trials on patients with pancreatic cancer are scheduled to begin in the summer of 2015.

Progress continues to be made in the fight against cancer nearly every day. Subscribe to our e-newsletter to get the latest information, including health and nutrition tips, delivered right to your inbox.   

 

After Cancer, Immunotherapy, Stage Four Cancer Treatment

Stage 4 Lung Cancer Patient 10 Years Cancer Free after Issels Integrative Immunotherapy

Lung Cancer
Lung Cancer

Lung cancer is the No. 1 cancer killer in the U.S. and the world, and small cell lung cancer is considered its most lethal form. Diagnosed with recurrent small cell lung cancer, Jim Gibson felt he was facing a certain death sentence when he sought treatment at Issels alternative cancer treatment centers in 2003. When standard cancer treatments did not work, Jim decided to try non-toxic integrative immunotherapy as a last resort. The decision saved his life. After just four weeks of exclusive Issels immunotherapy that included dendritic cell vaccine, Jim achieved complete tumor remission. Jim has now been cancer-free for 10 years and enjoys a healthy, active life. (Click to hear Jim’s story in his own words.)

As reported in the Sacramento Bee, “In recent years the surge of immunotherapy has given cancer sufferers new hope.” A leader in integrative immunotherapy for more than 60 years, Issels Integrative Oncology has been at the forefront of the immunotherapy movement that is now being embraced by practitioners of traditional medicine as “amazing” and “a game-changer” in the treatment of cancer. Many cancer researchers now believe that immunotherapy is the future of cancer treatment and our best hope for an eventual cure.

Immunotherapy enhances and harnesses the power of the body’s own immune system to target and destroy cancer cells. A non-toxic alternative cancer treatment, integrative immunotherapy does not batter the body with toxic chemotherapy or radiation so it does not produce the debilitating side effects that so many cancer patients fear. The non-toxic aspect and strong track record of immunotherapy is leading more cancer patients to consider it as a first choice for treatment rather than a last resort. As Issels patient Nicole Tupper says, “Try this first … it’s an amazing option.”