Headlines of the day II: Wonder drug edition

From CNN:

Marijuana: The next diabetes drug?

From Collective Evolution:

New Study Shows Cannabinoids Improve Efficiency Of Mitochondria And Remove Damaged Brain Cells

From MSN:

Choosing pot over pills may be the way to go for Crohn’s sufferers

From Medical Daily:

Marijuana’s Active Ingredient May Weaken HIV

In a new study, researchers suggest THC-like compounds may have a weakening effect on HIV infection.

From the scientific journal Oncology’s Cancer Network:

Cannabis Linked to Decreased Bladder Cancer Risk

And there’s an important negative finding, too, as noted in this headline from The Oncology Report:

Marijuana habit not linked to lung cancer

And then there’s this from Business Insider, disproving that old canard about the effects of “The Munchies” and providing a surefire incentive for the headline to follow:

Pot Smokers Are Skinnier

From Waking Times, clear evidence that Big Medicine is eager to move:

Who Is Trying To Patent Marijuana?

Finally, from Deutsche Welle, a headline about an idea whose time has obviously come:

OAS calls for drugs rethink, proposes legalization

Chemo Chronicles: We’re halfway through it

The one singular feature of our course of chemotherapy is mental fatigue.

Simply put, the one-two punch of cisplatin and gemcitabine hydrochloride deployed again the metatstatic and highly aggressive micropapillary carcinoma that’s cost us our bladder [and the prostate as well, along with its own breed of slower-growing adenoma] leaves with the our giddy-up-go got up and gone.

Our hemoglobin levels have been declining, which is typical for the Double Whammy regime we’re following, and may require blood transfusions down the line.

We’re also getting two days of IV hydration following our next two [final two] Double Whammy sessions, each followed by two gemcitabine-only sessions.

The regime is experimental in the sense that the rareness of the micropaillary breed is such that there’s no standard treatment. Both our surgeon and our oncologist say that the chemo can cut our chance of another malignant siege from fifty percent to twenty percent.

Sometimes we find ourself wondering if the misery is worth the effort, but we persevere. Besides, we’ve got a a grandchild, currently known as Shrimpy, due in July and a daughter hoping for a grampa who’ll indulge said Shrimpy — a role that seems to come naturally to us [infants and cats seem to find us okay].

With family and friends to cherish and that damn sense of obligation we can’t seem to shake, we’ll hang on, miserable though we may be.

The worst may be yet to come [including the possibility of transfusions if steadily declining hemoglobin levels pass a numerical Rubicon], but we’ve been learning how to handle the worst of it.

That damn problem with writing

One significant impact of the chemo has been that inability to bring ourselves into heretofore normal writing mode, and that peculiar frisson accompanying the exposition of insights in coherent and meaningful patterns and insights drawn from experiences dictated in part by curiosity and compulsion to understand the embodied encounter with the grist of a life as it evolves under a unique constellation of forces and environments.

When we’re up to par, we live to write and we write to live.

Journalism’s been our way of exploring the world and asking the questions we’re impelled to ask on behalf of anyone who’s curious to understand forces at play in the world around them.

With a passion to understand and a bone-deep sense of obligation, journalism was just the ticket. Talk about your professional student — and getting paid for it, too!

All of which is to say that stringing together words is at the core of our identity.

But as the chemo strikes at our basic energy level, we find we have little problem with reading [which comes easier than screen-watching] or with conversation [which, when done right, is itself energizing], when it comes to writing out thoughts, we’ve been stumped.

Hence the light blog postings, and the end of those comprehensive EuroWatch and GreeceWatch reports.

Cannabis seems to help, abating both the nausea and allowing a greater-than-chemo-typical ability to sling words.

One thing I never would’ve imagined back in the 1960′s: My first legal cannabis purchase came with a senior discount. . .

Chemo Chronicles: Round Two begins

Today marked the start of the second of our four four-session rounds of chemotherapy designed to head off the spread of a very aggressive “high grade” micropapillary carcinoma spawned in our bladder and escaped to one of the twenty lift nodes they took along with the bladder and prostate.

Because the cancer is relatively rare, there’s no body of comparative studies on the impact of various chemo regimes on our particular little serial killer, so we opted for the one picked by all but one of the Kaiser oncologists who met to discuss our case [the dissenter argued for no treatment, and because of the lack of documentation].

An optional treatment discussed but not selected was a chemo regime that would’ve left us feeling miserable after every session, as opposed to the regime we agreed on, which confines the real misery to the wake of the first of three weekly IV sessions, followed by a one-week break, with the whole cycle repeated four times.

Today [Tuesday] was the five-hour epic initial session, and featured a whole pharmacopeia: Oral doses of a pair of anti-nausea drugs dexamethasone [a steroid] and ondansetron [anti-nausea], plus IV doses of fosaprepitant [anti-barfing] and the two heavy-hitting chemo drugs, gemcitabine and cisplatin. Preceding the chemo IV bags [the CISplatin comes in a full liter bag] were other saline-only bags to keep the system hydrated during the chemical assault.

In our initial experience of the Dread Double Whammy, the real misery didn’t come Wednesday [when we took two steroid and two ondansetron tablets] but on Thursday and Friday, when we doubled up — as prescribed — on the steroids.

There was one problem.

We were listening but not hearing during a pre-therapy class a nurse told us we should routinely take milk of magnesia after IV sessions because chemo constipates [and, we later learned, ondansetron is a another culprit]. We neglected her advice, and nine days of misery followed [including our second dose of chemo, the first of two two-hour gembatacine-only sessions], and ended only thanks to a cork-popping trip to the emergency room.

With all those ominous Round One misery memories looming, we were deeply grateful that a dear friend drove us to the Double Whammy opening Round two, stayed with us for the whole five hours, then drove us home — just as another friend had sat with us during our first session.

Perhaps surprisingly, the long sessions yielded rich conversations, punctuated by smiles, chuckles, and the occasional laughter. They were life-enhancing, affirming what’s best in our often-miserable species.

We can’t begin to express how deeply we’ve been touched by the expressions of friendship and compassion we’ve received since our diagnosis first came down. Our two daughters, their mother and her spouse, and our son all helped prepare our apartment whilst we lay in a hospital or nursing home bed, and dear friends we’ve met during our years in Berkeley [ten as of this coming July] have kept our spirits up by their companionship, calls, and emails. Then there are the old friends who stay in touch, and our Parisian muse, Moussequetaire.

We’re simply awed that we’ve blessed with riches we never even knew we possessed.

So as we write, we ponder the days ahead. We know, from last week’s visit to our oncologist, that it’s likely that we won’t get our usual energy back until July, the third month after the end of the fourth and final cycle.

But, he says, we’re doing better than most folks, so maybe June?

Who knows, right?

All we can say for sure right now is that we’re deeply grateful.

Chemo Chronicles: Status, and another drug

We made a trip to see our oncologist this week, and the word back is good.

Indeed, we’re told, we’re handling the chemotherapy better than the average patient. And while we received only half the scheduled dose at last week’s single-dose session because of some worrisome blood test results, that’s par for the course in this new and relatively experimental form of treatment.

Oh, and the hair is starting to go, as we discovered during a Monday brushing after noticing some silver threads amongst the white cotton of our pillow case.

All of which means that we’re on for our second of four dreaded double-whammy sessions Tuesday, hopefully without the more painful consequences of the first go-round. We get a total of twelve chemo sessions spread out over four months, of which four are the five-hour double-whammy mix of a gemcitabine hydrochloride and cisplatin. The next two sessions consist only of gemcitabine. Then comes a one week break, and the cycle begins anew for a total of four times.

Meanwhile, we indulge very modestly in the medical cannabis we’re allowed. Following Tuesday’s cookie, tincture, and smoke experience, we confined ourselves only to the nocturnal tincture Wednesday, perhaps helping us get a good night’s sleep.

Another banned drug treatment shows promise

This time, it’s another banned drug from the Sixties, psilocybin, and it’s being used not to treat terminal cancer itself but to alleviate patient anxiety.

Here’s one woman’s experience, via the New York University Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study:

From New York University vias Newswise:

Improvements in the diagnosis and treatment of cancers in recent years have led to a marked increase in patients’ physical survival rates. While doctors can treat the physical disease, what is not well understood is how best to address the psychological needs of patients with cancer.

In addition to the physical pain associated with cancer, many patients also experience psychologically harmful symptoms of anxiety, depression, anger, and denial. Social isolation, in addition to hopelessness, helplessness and loss of independence, has also been associated with significant psychological suffering in patients coping with advanced-stage cancer.

A recently published book chapter “Use of the Classic Hallucinogen Psilocybin for Treatment of Existential Distress Associated with Cancer,” reviews the potential of a novel psychoactive drug, psilocybin, in alleviating the psychological and spiritual distress that often accompanies a life-threatening cancer diagnosis.

The chapter, published in Psychological Aspects of Cancer: A Guide to Emotional and Psychological Consequences of Cancer, Their Causes, and Their Management, was co-written by Anthony P. Bossis, PhD, Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, Radiology, and Medicine at the New York University College of Dentistry (NYUCD) and Langone Medical Center.

The hallucinogen treatment model with psilocybin has been shown to induce a mystical or spiritual experience and is a unique therapeutic approach to reduce the anxiety of terminal cancer patients.

“Mystical or peak consciousness states in cancer patients have been

Chemo Chronicles: From fug to fugue

Despite the nausea, constipation, and other sundry physical effects of the cancer chemotherapy we’re undergoing, we’d have to say the worst impact has been the creeping mental miasma.

Regular esnl readers have no doubt detected the results in the decline of frequency and depth of our posts, initially the result of the simple shock that comes from learning your body has turned on itself, followed by the physical shock of two surgeries.

Besides the loss of a cancerous bladder and prostate, we also find ourselves with a new means of draining our kidneys, thanks to the removal of a section of intestine and its reshaping into a conduct to carry urine from our surgically truncated uterers into a puckering pink urine-dripping extrusion [stoma] to the right of our navel.

There was pain after both surgeries [the first via catheter, the second by a large incision now commemorated in in a scar running betwixt navel to pubis, we stopped taking painkillers two days after leaving the hospital, leaving us an unwanted surplus of Percocets.

While the process of getting used to wearing what’s colorfully called an “urostomy bag” proved something of a trial, we managed to adapt to the stoma-drip-catching self-adhesive bags with the minimum of extra trips to the laundry.

But the biopsy showed the cancer, a rather rare micropapillary breed, had spread to at least one lymph node, and hence the four-month chemo regime, starting with our first double hit 8 January.

Of our three monthly sessions, the first is the real shit-kicker, a double dose of chemical cocktails administered over five hours. The nausea began on the second day, and lingered two more days, kept in relative check by another two-part chemical cocktail. Nine days of constipation began on the second day after the session, adding a whole new level of discomfort and ended only by a trip to the emergency room.

What still lingered was a peculiar sort of mental lethargy, a lingering mentational malady which allowed us to read a dozen hours a day but without the fuel to synthesize my responses into writing. Hence the decline in frequency of posting.

Our progeny and several friends had been urging us to get a medical marijuana letter, so we finally did, overcoming our natural inclination to add our name to yet another list.

So we became a member of a local medical marijuana club, and have now procured our first-ever California-legal weed. The only previous legal drugs we’d experienced had been our first dose of LSD in 1966, swallowed the night before it became illegal in Nevada, and hashish we bought at an Amsterdam coffee house in 2006 on the same trip where we bought a batch of just-plucked Psilocybin mushrooms procured from one of those now-closed Smart Shops legally offering both ’shrooms and live peyote cacti.

We mention this because we’re no strangers to cannabis, and we’ve done more than our share [1966-72] of psychedelics, with 2006 being our last experience of the latter.

We learned a lot about mind-altering drugs during our three-year service as scribe and block print carver for a Tantric Hindu artist and non-guru guru. The Tantrics and Shavites have developed a Prime Directive of cannabis use which we still follow: Never consume or ingest cannabis within three hours of eating. The reason is simple: Cannabis pulls blood into the brain, and when you consume while you’re digesting you create a conflict, with blood craved by the brain diverted to the digestive system, and leading to lethargy and sleepiness.

29 January 2013, Panasonic DMZ-ZS19, ISO 400, 12.5 mm, 1/50 sec, f5

With a chemo-sensitized gut, we followed the rules today, and the result has been a distinct lifting of the mental lethargy, using the fruits of our visit to the Berkeley club a block from Casa esnl: A free Rhino Pellet [a cinnamon cookie made with cannabis-infused butter], an oral nocturnal cannabis and essential oil tincture [left], and a pinch of hash to brighten up our minor remnant of some seven-year-old Humboldt homegrown.

Our stomach is calm, our energy and mood increased to the point we tackled some serious house cleaning/organizing, and we’ve also done more posts than usual.

Intimations of other benefits

We also bear in mind that a growing body of research indicates that a non-psychoactive component of cannabis inhibits growth in cancer cells.

As San Francisco Chronicle reporter Victoria Colliver wrote last 18 September:

A growing body of early research shows a compound found in marijuana – one that does not produce the plant’s psychotropic high – seems to have the ability to “turn off” the activity of a gene responsible for metastasis in breast and other types of cancers.

Two scientists at San Francisco’s California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute first released data five years ago that showed how this compound – called cannabidiol – reduced the aggressiveness of human breast cancer cells in the lab.

>snip<

“The preclinical trial data is very strong, and there’s no toxicity. There’s really a lot of research to move ahead with and to get people excited,” said Sean McAllister, who along with scientist Pierre Desprez, has been studying the active molecules in marijuana – called cannabinoids – as potent inhibitors of metastatic disease for the past decade.

Red the rest.

The National Cancer Institute website is less adulatory on its Cannabis and Cannabinoids web page, noting only this:

No clinical trials of Cannabis as a treatment for cancer in humans were identified in a PubMed search; however, a single small study of intratumoral injection of delta-9-THC in patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme reported potential antitumoral activity.

Donald Abrams, chief of oncology at UCSF physician said this to NBC News:

“If this plant were discovered in the Amazon today, scientists would be falling all over each other to be the first to bring it to market.”

And consider this, from the Science Updates blog of Cancer Research UK:

Through many detailed experiments, handily summarised in this recent article in the journal Nature Reviews Cancer, scientists have discovered that various cannabinoids (both natural and synthetic) have a wide range of effects in the lab, including:

• Triggering cell death, through a mechanism called apoptosis
• Stopping cells from dividing
• Preventing new blood vessels from growing into tumours
• Reducing the chances of cancer cells spreading through the body, by stopping cells from moving or invading neighbouring tissue
• Speeding up the cell’s internal ‘waste disposal machine’ – a process known as autophagy – which can lead to cell death

All these effects are thought to be caused by cannabinoids locking onto the CB1 and CB2 cannabinoid receptors. It also looks like cannabinoids can exert effects on cancer cells that don’t involve cannabinoid receptors, although it isn’t yet clear exactly what’s going on there.

Read the rest.

And go here [PDF] for a 2010 metareview of medical studies, including Multiple Sclerosis, chronic pain, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, nausea, brain cancer, and more.

And another wrapup’s here.

The bottom line: Since we’re engaged in fighting cancer, we’ll take all the help we can get.

[Oh, and as for psilocybin, see here and here.]