Day 29 - Vice

I cannot get enough of the Vice: Killing Cancer special report.  If you have have HBO (or are a good Googler.  I think that the full documentary is available on YouTube), I encourage you to watch.  Here's a sneak peek of the episode below..look at me embedding content.

Researchers/physicians are taking some common and some not so common viruses, mutating them so that they are not infectious and injecting them into people who have cancer and have run out of options.  They have seen absolutely fascinating results. In many cases, the viruses are causing patients to go into full remission.  Full remission.  Part of this report follows a young girl who was on the brink of death from leukemia.  Her family was desperate, and in her final hour (pretty much), she was enrolled in a clinical trial in PA during which she was injected with a modified HIV virus, one of the more scary viruses of our time.  The HIV virus attacked and killed the cancer cells in her body.  After two very very scary weeks during which time she was in a coma because her body was working so hard, she woke up and within four weeks, no cancer could be found in her body.  No cancer could be found in her body after her parents were previously told to take her home from the hospital because there was nothing left they could to to treat her cancer.

I can't even get over how absolutely amazing this is, and I am fascinated by the science behind it.  What caused a doctor or group of doctors to say "hey, maybe HIV can kill this cancer."  Incredible.

I read a Forbes article about this documentary that, of course, cautioned people from getting to crazy excited about this medicine because it is still being tested and is not applicable (yet) to most solid tumors (such as breast cancer), but how could one not get crazy excited about something so revolutionary.

Anyway, I encourage you to watch the documentary if you're so inclined.  It is worth 42 minutes of your time or, in my case 42x5 minutes of my time...can't get enough. For some reason, I could not find it via Uverse HBO On Demand but could through HBO Go on my Roku.  Go figure. Uverse On Demand is not the best though so other providers may make things easier.

I continue to feel well this week, and I think that my body is bouncing back nicely from last week's chemo treatment.  I am dreading next week, on one hand, because I know that I will feel pretty lousy for a few days after treatment.  On the other hand, I am looking forward to next week because that horrible red medicine is going to make me better.  The lousy is worth it, and knowing what to expect will help me manage things a little bit better.