Category: Myeloma Treatment

Myeloma Treatment

CancerCare Launches New Program to Help Multiple Myeloma Patients Cover Transportation Costs

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A list member just told us about this. Thanks, Sandy!

CancerCare Launches New Program to Help Multiple Myeloma Patients Cover Transportation Costs

Help with myeloma treatment travel expenses‘Door to Door’ initiative offers individual grants to patients to help defray costs of transportation to and from medical care

NEW YORK, July 20 /PRNewswire/ — CancerCare announced today the launch of the “Door to Door” program for patients with multiple myeloma. CancerCare’s program will provide individual grants of up to $600 annually to multiple myeloma patients for covering transportation costs such as gasoline and taxi, bus or train fare to and from their medical care.

The program is funded in part by a generous grant from Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company. CancerCare is a national non-profit organization based in New York City that provides free support services to people affected by cancer.

Multiple myeloma is a cancer of the bone marrow that is diagnosed in approximately 20,000 people annually in the U.S. Advances in the treatment of this cancer have dramatically increased patients’ life expectancy (an estimated 60,000 people in the U.S. are now living with multiple myeloma) and consequently lengthened the duration of treatment.

“Because of the nature of their therapies and the disease itself, many multiple myeloma patients may be required to visit their doctors several times a week over many months. Particularly for patients on a fixed income, these travel expenses add up and create a financial burden that may prevent them from keeping up with their health care,” noted Diane Blum, executive director of CancerCare. “The Door to Door program will provide much-needed relief to this patient population, and we are grateful for Millennium’s support.”

Founded in 1944, CancerCare has a long track record of providing financial assistance to people facing cancer; it is a cornerstone of its direct support services to help people cope with the emotional and practical issues of a cancer diagnosis. During fiscal year 2009, CancerCare provided over $4.2 million in grants to more than 24,000 people with cancer to cover treatment-related costs like transportation, child care and medications for side effects.

Last year CancerCare launched a separate foundation to help cancer patients cover the cost of their health insurance co-payments for certain types of treatments. To date, the CancerCare Co-Payment Assistance Foundation has assisted thousands of people undergoing cancer treatments with grants of up to $10,000.

To receive a Door to Door transportation grant, patients must meet certain eligibility criteria and complete an application form. The form can be viewed on the CancerCare website at www.cancercare.org.

For more information about the CancerCare Door to Door program, contact Jeanie M. Barnett, director of communications, at 212-712-6137; or email jbarnett@cancercare.org. For more information about multiple myeloma, see CancerCare’s free Connect booklet, Advances in the Treatment of Multiple Myeloma, available to order or download from the CancerCare
website.

About CancerCare

CancerCare is a national non-profit organization that provides free, professional support services to anyone affected by cancer: people with cancer, caregivers, children, loved ones, and the bereaved. CancerCare programs – including counseling, education, financial assistance and practical help – are led by professional oncology social workers and are completely free of charge. Founded in 1944, CancerCare now provides individual help to more than 100,000 people each year, and has more than
one million unique visitors annually to its websites. For more information, call 1-800-813-HOPE (4673) or visit www.cancercare.org.

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Immunoglobulin Profile for June 1, 2009

GENLAB Immunology: Final    06/01/2009 15:03

IMMUNOGLOBULIN PROFILE
                                                             Reference
  IMMUNOGLOBULIN G                  *410         mg/dL       [588-1573]
          TEST REPEATED TO CONFIRM
            NOTE:  African-American reference ranges differ slightly from
                   those listed.  Please call the Immunology Lab at 684-6939
                   for race specific ranges.
  IMMUNOGLOBULIN A                  *432         mg/dL       [46-287]
          TEST REPEATED TO CONFIRM
  IMMUNOGLOBULIN M                  *26          mg/dL       [57-237]
  IMMUNOGLOBULIN E                   30          IU/mL       [4-269]
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Serum Protein Electrophoresis for June 1, 2009

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Lab Report: Final    06/01/2009 14:36

SERUM PROTEIN ELECTROPHORESIS
                                                             Reference
  SPE INTERP
   COMPARED TO 2/10/09, NO SIGNIFICANT CHANGE IN PREVIOUSLY
  CHARACTERIZED (2) IGA-LAMBDA COMPONENTS FROM 0.21 TO 0.25 AND
  0.14 TO 0.19 G/DL.
  "I have personally performed the interpretation".  Dr. S. Pizzo, MD,PhD

  SPE TOTAL PROTEIN                  6.8         g/dL        [6.0-8.0]
  SPE ALBUMIN %                      65.6        %
  SPE ALBUMIN                        4.46        g/dL        [3.97-5.34]
  SPE ALPHA 1 %                      2.9         %
  SPE ALPHA 1                        0.20        g/dL        [0.11-0.32]
  SPE ALPHA 2 %                      10.5        %
  SPE ALPHA 2                        0.71        g/dL        [0.40-0.88]
  SPE BETA %                         11.3        %
  SPE BETA                           0.77        g/dL        [0.60-1.02]
  SPE GAMMA %                        9.7         %
  SPE GAMMA                          0.66        g/dL        [0.53-1.37]
  SPE M-SPIKE 1 %                    3.7         %
  SPE M-SPIKE 1                      0.25        g/dL
  SPE M-SPIKE 2 %                    2.8         %
  SPE M-SPIKE 2                      0.19        g/dL
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The eight lethal cancers

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A blog reader sent this to me, and I wanted to pass it on.

Hi Beth,

I follow your blog and thought you might be interested to know about a new initiative launched by a coalition of patient advocacy organizations during the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).  Led by the International Myeloma Foundation (IMF), MDS Foundation and the Tackle Myeloma Foundation (TMF), they unveiled a patient “Statement of Principles” to address the inequalities in reimbursement of cancer therapies.

Currently, Medicare and private insurance companies require higher deductibles and co-payments for oral drugs than for IV therapies and inpatient procedures.  However, private insurance is regulated at the state level and Oregon, Indiana and Iowa have laws requiring equal coverage with similar legislation pending in several additional states and federal legislation introduced in Congress.

If you’re interested in learning more or signing the petition, you can check out the IMF or MDSF websites.

Best,
Allison

If you go to the IMF’s web site, you can read more about the Cancer Patient Statement of Principles.  This was taken from their web site.

About the eight lethal cancers
Eight forms of cancer, of which multiple myeloma is one, are projected to cause 49% of the 562,340* cancer deaths projected in 2009. For each of these forms of cancer, at least half of the patients diagnosed will die from their cancer within five years. Those cancers are:

Type of cancer

Deaths projected in 2009

New diagnoses projected in 2009

5-year survival rate

Brain cancer

12,920

22,070

35%

Pancreatic cancer

35,240

42,470

5%

Esophageal cancer

14,350

16,470

16%

Liver cancer

18,160

22,620

10%

Lung cancer

159,390

219,440

15%

Multiple myeloma

10,580

20,580

34%

Ovarian cancer

14,600

21,550

45%

Stomach cancer

10,620

21,130

24%

*Source: Cancer Facts & Figures 2009, American Cancer Society, Atlanta. 2009

Click here to support the Cancer Patient Statement of Principles.
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Oral mucositis caused by your myeloma treatment

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I was told about about a research project that’s underway.  I have no affiliation with the group, so please do your due diligence.  If you participate, let us know how it went.

We are currently looking for people that have suffered “oral mucositis” (mouth inflammation or sores) as a result of cancer treatment to participate in 45 min telephone interviews.

The purpose of this research is to understand what does or does not work as treatment for this condition.

The interviews can be scheduled this week and next and participants receive $100.

Please respond with interest to contacts below. If this is not you, please refer or post for others that may have interest.

Kind Regards

Jan Mallery-Groom RN
Clinical Project Manager
+510-922-9710
recruitingresourcesllc.com

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My Uncle and www.MyelomaForums.com

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All,

My uncle Darryl Ramsey was recently diagnosed with Stage 3 Multiple Myeloma and was told that he has aprox 1 year to live.  However, my uncle feels that Chemo and Radation are a waste of time because he now knows he has been sick with Multiple Myeloma for over 10 years and thinks he is still here today because of the fact that he was the type of person to refuse going to doctors and he for years started jucing and eating better every day.  Like most people the first thing my uncle did was a Google search and he found nothing but grimm information.  I started www.myelomaforums.com because I wanted him and others like him to have access to information from other people so that him and others like him know about all the best treatments and have access to all the answers.  However, the hardest part of getting a sucessful forum started is getting people and content.  I am here to ask everyone to please sign up with www.myelomaforums.com as well because the more your stories are out there the more people we can help.

Thanks,

Andy

P.S. Beth your’re a sweetheart and thanks for the kind email and willingness to help.

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RSS Feed aggregator for myeloma blogs

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I’m putting my links to blogs into a feed aggregator. If your blog has an RSS feed and you’d like to have it on the list, let me know. Just us the contact form.  Don’t forget to tell me what the URL for your valid RSS feed is.

http://www.myelomablogs.org/?type=archive

If you don’t have a blog or an RSS feed, why not set up one at healthblogs.org?

Find out what others are doing: myeloma treatment, chemo, coping

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Green tea polyphenols block the anticancer effects of bortezomib and other boronic acid-based proteasome inhibitors

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This caught my eye because I’ve been on Velcade before and never gave a second thought to whether or not I should not be consuming green tea/green tea products.

Blood First Edition Paper, prepublished online February 3, 2009; DOI 10.1182/blood-2008-07-171389.

Submitted July 28, 2008
Accepted January 12, 2009

Encouse B. Golden, Philip Y. Lam, Adel Kardosh, Kevin J. Gaffney, Enrique Cadenas, Stan G. Louie, Nicos A. Petasis, Thomas C. Chen, and Axel H. Schonthal*

Department of Pathology, University of Southern California (USC) Keck School of Medicine (KSOM), Los Angeles, CA, United States
Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Toxicology, USC School of Pharmacy (SoP), Los Angeles, CA, United States
Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, USC KSOM, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Department of Chemistry, USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy, USC SoP, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Department of Neurosurgery, USC KSOM, Los Angeles, CA, United States

* Corresponding author; email: schontha@usc.edu.

The anticancer potency of green tea and its individual components is being intensely investigated, and some cancer patients already self-medicate with this ‘miracle herb’ in hopes of augmenting the anticancer outcome of their chemotherapy. Bortezomib (Velcade®) is a proteasome inhibitor in clinical use for multiple myeloma. Here, we investigated whether the combination of these compounds would yield increased antitumor efficacy in multiple myeloma and glioblastoma cell lines in vitro and in vivo. Unexpectedly, we discovered that various green tea constituents, in particular (-)-epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and other polyphenols with 1,2-benzenediol moieties, effectively prevented tumor cell death induced by bortezomib in vitro and in vivo. This pronounced antagonistic function of EGCG was only evident with boronic acid-based proteasome inhibitors (bortezomib, MG-262, PS-IX), but not with several non-boronic acid proteasome inhibitors (MG-132, PS-I, nelfinavir). EGCG directly reacted with bortezomib and blocked its proteasome inhibitory function; as a consequence, bortezomib could not trigger endoplasmic reticulum stress or caspase-7 activation, and did not induce tumor cell death. Taken together, our results indicate that green tea polyphenols may have the potential to negate the therapeutic efficacy of bortezomib and suggest that consumption of green tea products may be contraindicated during cancer therapy with bortezomib.

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