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Showing posts from December, 2019

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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It is hard to believe we had started this blog over a year ago! your support has been integral to our success. We are now back home on a forced six week treatment holiday. the first week of December in Mexico City,  Layla was scheduled to receive three separate intra-tumoral injections (Monday, Wednesday and Friday).  Dr. Williams injected her liver on  Monday  with few immunotherapy agents that are designed to attack the cancer at  the  injection site as well as the other cancerous lesions throughout. On  wednesday , when he was ready to do the second injection, he noticed on the scan as all injections are performed under CT guidance, an inflammation in her lungs that he diagnosed as pneumonitis which is an auto immune disease and a side effect of the immunotherapy treatment that could  have  been  caused  by the use of anti PD-1 checkpoint inhibitors. we have to abort the immunotherapy treatment for six weeks. Dr. Williams treated Layla with a heavy dose of steroids and she was

Mexico City, Third Time is a Charm!

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We were thrilled to be home, for few days at least, and get to spend Thanksgiving with the family. We left Vienna following 9 weeks of immunotherapy. The latest petscan (taken upon our return from Vienna) showed improvement, and the tumor markers are down by 30%. The scan along with the tumor marker trend validated the treatment. There is a clear need for additional treatment. We are now in Mexico City undergoing another multi intra-tumoral injection with Dr. Williams (The Williams Cancer Institute) and are we are planning to return to Vienna for six weeks of treatment in January. The idea is to keep the immune system engaged to maximize tumor cell death. We are also using Coley’s toxins that are available in Mexico in between the Intra-Tumoral injections and the Vienna treatment. We had a series of 3 injections prior to our leaving to Mexico City and Layla had a great response. Coley’s toxins is the first form of immunotherapy from the late 1800’s invented by Dr. William Coley.