That's precisely my point. I don't get much freedom when it comes to international healthcare and won't be able to save enough to pay out of pocket/take a loan for something as dramatic as this. The only insurance answer to this is a Dread Disease insurance which pays out once specific illnesses appear, but the amount and illnesses are completely dependent on your financials aswell, so you're still worse off in this…
I don’t know about the German insurance, but for example the Swiss insurance makes a specific exception: in case there is no adequate treatment or expertise available within Swiss borders, the insurance must cover a foreign treatment.
Sadly, as shown in my linked case, that isn't the case here.
The boy would most likely have died if his parents didn't publicly raise the funds themselves and pursued the therapy in the US.
As has already been stated you can use the prior tissue to better individualize current treatment. For example I'm a really rare patient, most people in my situation are already dead by this point in their treatment. Chemotherapy worked so well most of my primary tumor was gone within days and they haven't seen it since my 6th treatment. They still think it's there but it's generally too small to be seen. They didn't…
What kind of cancer did/do you have and at what stage did you begin treatment? This is truly astonishing, by the way.
I'm stage 4 Stomach cancer, started there because it's super aggressive, the OS for 5 years at stage 4 is 5% at last reading, based on my current treatment outcomes I've got at least another year in me based on available treatments as I'm still first line and the cancer is still responding to chemo. I'm aiming for 10 years, because go big or go home right? It was all through my periodontal cavity, but apparently aside from the primary tumor my cancer cells are too small to be seen on imaging, PET or CT. I'm apparently supposed to be dead already, and yet here I am kicking around. I get "you don't look like you have cancer" a lot, because I'm on the bigger side. It was the best damned weight loss program I was ever on though, lost 60lbs before my first chemo. It took me a while to realize just how stupendously lucky I was. Every single day I wake up terrified that it could be my last and every single night I go to bed terrified I might die in my sleep. Every treatment has a risk of death, or get this, causing new cancers. I'm heading into my 16th treatment of 5FU and just recently dropped the Oxaliplatin, which causes permanent nerve damage in most people, but it's way better than death, which it can also cause if you have a bad reaction. I've been planning out a Youtube channel for younger people like me who get cancer, and I suppose older people would appreciate it too. I've missed very few days of work over this whole thing and it's been mostly an inconvenience. I've got mostly good days, been way more chipper since getting diagnosed oddly enough, I have some bad days, and nights I straight up cry in the shower so my wife doesn't see. I think the best thing about getting cancer is that I have an excuse to make people in a cancer ward laugh with my dark humor and no one will say anything because we all need to laugh, it's the only time that constant nagging in your head about how close you are to death seems to go away. I suspect that's kind of like soldiers in long-term dangerous deployments, there's a lot of waiting and everything is normal and you get into a routine, and then without warning you're in danger and everyone's moving and serious, and there's no time for jokes because everyone's just trying to focus on staying alive. But again, I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm still lucky enough to have the privilege to worry about this. I'm still lucky enough to wake up and see the amazing person my child is becoming. I've been lucky enough to be able to finally push myself into doing the charity work I've always wanted. I want everyone to have the opportunity to feel this lucky.
I think the study is biased towards cancers that are visible in the remains. If you died from leukemia, would that be evident based on your skeleton?
I do not know the answer for leukemia but this is another issue that was considered in the paper. If people are put off by the paywall: https://sci-hub.tw/#about
Literally the only thing they seem to say for sure in that paper is that they expect to see bone evidence they don't see. While I don't doubt the earnestness of the paper's authors, their primary study seems to be in Egyptology first. They practically gush about how the ancient Egyptian medicines are still in use today...but then only list ones based on papyrus. They don't account for the fact that our sedentary lifestyle is shown to increase cancer rates, they barely explore different cultures, with only a passing reference to Greece, who has numerous treatments, including excision to remove cancer, and admit that the ancient Egyptians didn't even classify benign tumors differently than no-benign. They don't account for the increased consumption of meat in a western diet. They don't account for massively higher numbers of humans.
Based on their paper alone I can think of at least 5 other hypothesis that they didn't even cover.
1. Periods of fasting and lack of food decrease cancer.
2. Less sedentary lifestyles decrease cancer risks(this has actually been shown to have some promise, with HIIT workouts showing improved response rates and decreased reccurance)
3. Decreased infant mortality caused an increase in susceptibility to cancer because weaker physical specimens are surviving.
4. Firearms. Cancer rates have increased with the output of firearms.
5. Decreased prayer to the Egyptian gods. As these gods declined cancer rates increased.
Some of these are obviously less serious than others, however it doesn't excuse the plausible possibilities. These aren't oncologists, their paleontologists, also known as historians who guess about things based on what they dig out of the ground.
I do not know the answer for leukemia but this is another issue that was considered in the paper. If people are put off by the paywall: https://sci-hub.tw/#about
Literally the only thing they seem to say for sure in that paper is that they expect to see bone evidence they don't see. While I don't doubt the earnestness of the paper's authors, their primary study seems to be in Egyptology first. They practically gush about how the ancient Egyptian medicines are still in use today...but then only list ones based on papyrus. They don't account for the fact that our sedentary life…
To sum up - cancer is driven by our environment, not just random mutations. As commented by others - we are doing a lot more to our environment and food sources to drive cancer (and other health problems) than random chance.
What kind of cancer did/do you have and at what stage did you begin treatment? This is truly astonishing, by the way.
I'm stage 4 Stomach cancer, started there because it's super aggressive, the OS for 5 years at stage 4 is 5% at last reading, based on my current treatment outcomes I've got at least another year in me based on available treatments as I'm still first line and the cancer is still responding to chemo. I'm aiming for 10 years, because go big or go home right? It was all through my periodontal cavity, but apparently asid…
I'm stage 4 Stomach cancer, started there because it's super aggressive, the OS for 5 years at stage 4 is 5% at last reading, based on my current treatment outcomes I've got at least another year in me based on available treatments as I'm still first line and the cancer is still responding to chemo. I'm aiming for 10 years, because go big or go home right? It was all through my periodontal cavity, but apparently asid…
Wow. You are incredible.
Eh won't go that far myself. I'm here because I've gotten a lot of help along the way when I've really needed it. I just try to give back in whatever way I can with the time I have left. I have good days and bad days still. It's just about not letting the bad days be more than the good days.