Complementary catch-up

I went to see my med onc on Monday and got his thoughts for complementary therapies that might work for me. Stuff like Avemar (sold as Avé in the US) which is this wheat germ extract that helps your immune system and might have anti-metastatic properties (at least it does in animals) and tastes to me like Tang with wheat bran (or that fiber drink Citrucel). I'm not sure if I'll be able to drink this every day, partly because, yuck, and partly because of the requirements, 1 hour before or after meals and 2 hours before or after supplements (which I take at meals) not to mention it's pretty expensive (as most these complementary therapy things are and insurance doesn't cover anything). So finding that special moment to drink the stuff when one actually has a life is a royal PITA. So, I'll drink it when I can and not sweat it. I bought a month's supply and will decide whether to keep doing it when it runs low.

Another recommendation is TM (Tetrathiomolybdate) which is a drug used to reduce copper levels in the body. They lower it to abnormally but safe low levels and then maintain that level (monitored by blood work, I think weekly). Less copper is supposed to inhibit tumor growth and there have been clinical trials going on, but it's definitely experimental and not in the mainstream realm. The drug company will supply the drug for free, however it has to go to a compound pharmacy where the cost to capsule it is very high (again, not covered by insurance as it's experimental). Since A. is still unemployed and our health insurance (COBRA) is extremely expensive, I have to really think about whether we want to dip further into our savings for this or not. I do have a friend who had metastatic endometrial cancer that used it and it shrunk her tumors enough that she was able to have what was left surgically removed and she's been free of cancer for 4 years now. My Integrative MD seems to think it's reasonable to use this therapy as a preventative in my case, however there is really no way to know how long to use it (he suggested reevaluating after a year) or whether it is working or not (except if the cancer comes back, similar to the issues of doing preventative chemo).

I find it very hard to decide what complementary therapies I want to use. I do the research, but even so, it often comes down to how easy it is to integrate into my daily life and how much it costs.

Speaking of complementary therapies, I signed on to participate in a research study by the Integrative Medicine dept. of my hospital for women with cancer to learn skills for living better with the stress of cancer. I don't know yet what exactly I'll be doing, but do know that I'll be in the experimental group. It's supposed to start next week and run for 8 weeks. I figured it couldn't hurt and might help a lot.