I don't know anything personally, but I know someone who works at Foundation Medicine. They do genetic-based cancer therapy recommendations based on tumor sequencing. It might be worth looking into.
Ask HN: How to Find the Best Info on Cancer Treatments?
51–60 of 90 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to Find the Best Info on Cancer Treatments?
#52One very important thing: your relative and people immediately affected should find a counselor and probably a physician that can provide medical intervention for the extreme stress and anxiety.
I was diagnosed with stage iv colon cancer a little over a year ago. I was in shock and emotionally completely numb, or so I thought. I started having anxiety attacks, but I didn't know what was going on - I thought I was dieing right then.
Eventually I wound up at the hospital where, after vitals and an interview about what I was feeling, they suggested what was really going on for me mentally and emotionally.
I now have anti anxiety medicines (Xanax) and I can tell when they're needed. I'm grateful for getting the psych support.
Ok, long winded, but basically a lot of what we deal with is made in our minds, and there is help available to mitigate the worst effects of this.
Good luck, and thanks to anyone here that works in the medical field, battling these diseases.
Re: Ask HN: How to Find the Best Info on Cancer Treatments?
#53I'm a radiation oncologist. I strongly advise you ask your questions to an oncologist. The amount of information available is simply crazy and "normal people" can rarely appreciate the subtleties of a disease and its treatments. Unfortunately, 10 years of training is impossible to squeeze in a few hours of reading. That being said, Grade IV gliomas are usually being treated with a combination of surgery, radiation an…
Do you know what sources oncologists used to keep themselves up to date?
Re: Ask HN: How to Find the Best Info on Cancer Treatments?
#54My daughter had cancer. Fortunately, she is still clear, but I have a pretty good idea what you are going through, both emotionally and with respect to finding qualified information. For what it is worth, I am very sorry your family has to go through this diagnosis and whatever comes next. Cancer sucks. From everything my wife and I could find, there is no such clearinghouse that is publicly available for what is the…
What's the "Web MD" effect?
Re: Ask HN: How to Find the Best Info on Cancer Treatments?
#55I'm a radiation oncologist. I strongly advise you ask your questions to an oncologist. The amount of information available is simply crazy and "normal people" can rarely appreciate the subtleties of a disease and its treatments. Unfortunately, 10 years of training is impossible to squeeze in a few hours of reading. That being said, Grade IV gliomas are usually being treated with a combination of surgery, radiation an…
Do you know what sources oncologists used to keep themselves up to date?
There are many. Personally I will read the NCCN recommendations and discussion section. They're updated frequently. UpToDate is another website I like.
I subscribe to Medscape oncology for cancer related news. Meetings are also a good way to stay up to date with what's new. Read by QxMD is an app I use to keep up with what's being published in my field.
Re: Ask HN: How to Find the Best Info on Cancer Treatments?
#56That's what oncologists do. You aren't going to learn oncology in a week.
So don't find a treatment, find the best cancer treatment center you can get the patient admitted to.
Re: Ask HN: How to Find the Best Info on Cancer Treatments?
#57I went through this - I was a caregiver for my partner who was diagnosed with GBM. It's a terrible disease, and by terrible, I mean most people have no idea. It's one of the diseases with an extraordinarily poor outcome ratio (under 5% past 2 years, depending on age, young people might be at 25% two years 5% three years) and terrible end of life scenarios. I can only hope that your family member is fairly old, it's a…
> I can only hope that your family member is fairly old, it's a heartbreaking disease for someone young.
It's a heartbreaking disease, period, no matter who it targets.
I hope the OP's relative has success with treatment, regardless of age. Nobody deserves to die.
Re: Ask HN: How to Find the Best Info on Cancer Treatments?
#58Mods should probably un-shadowban sibling commenter anon3315.
I've noticed people on HN are quick to punish with downvotes and shadowbanning. Why is that?
1. Lack of time to completely read a comment means that the first few words prominently determine a persons interpretation of a comment. If it is something they disagree with, anger motivates more than positive.
2. Preconceived notions of big pharma.
3. It looks better than black.
Re: Ask HN: How to Find the Best Info on Cancer Treatments?
#59anon3315's [oddly] dead comment: (See my comment below for context, currently undergoing chemo). Just wanted to comment that I'm a huge fan of Genentech. They developed Ritiximab (Rituxin) which I'm currently getting treated with. It's a monoclonal antibody as you mention and it's improved outcomes for my condition (DLBCL Non Hodgkins Lymphoma) by around 15%. It's given in combination with traditional 'CHOP' chemo an…
Thanks. I posted about 1000 words below on this account and signed in on my non-anonymous account and they're completely invisible. I've been on here 4 years guys and just don't really want the world to know I have cancer. So would be nice to at least let it be visible and get downvoted rather than effectively delete something I took a good 20 minutes to write.
Your anon account got hit by a spam filter. Sorry; those are tuned more aggressively for new accounts. We've unkilled its comments and marked it legit so this won't happen again.
We're soon going to release a feature that will allow community members to unkill dead comments, so fixing this kind of situation won't depend on mods happening to see it for too much longer.
The only reason we knew about this to fix it was that a user helpfully sent an email. Please, everybody, follow the guidelines and let us know about problems that way, rather than complaining about them in the threads. It's physically impossible for us to read all the threads; there's far too much content.
Re: Ask HN: How to Find the Best Info on Cancer Treatments?
#60Mods should probably un-shadowban sibling commenter anon3315.
Fixed now. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10144948.