How is greed potentially impacting chemo drug shortages? This week Fight Colorectal Cancer will be closely monitoring testimony at the Senate Commerce Committee about this disturbing practice. Below MSNBC has an eye opening piece on the topic that a Congressional investigation by Chairman John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV, Senator Tom Harkin, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has been investigating for better part of a year.

Maryland Congressman Cummings says he launched the probe after receiving a letter from University of Maryland women’s basketball coach Brenda Frese, who was having trouble getting medication to treat her son’s leukemia. The lawmaker is proposing reforms to deter price-gouging and make the drug supply chain safer.

Shortages have forced doctors to postpone chemotherapy and surgeries or provide less effective treatment and in some cases have even been blamed for deaths.

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Please note: the hearing will be webcast live via the Senate Commerce Committee website. Refresh the Commerce Committee homepage 10 minutes prior to the scheduled start time to automatically begin streaming the webcast.

The FDA has approved Prepopik, a powder mixture of sodium picosulfate, magnesium oxide, and citric acid, as a colonoscopy prep.

The new prep is a low volume drink that consists of two 5 ounces of water and two packets of laxative chemicals that need to be mixed together. In two clinical trials it was as effective as polyethylene glycol plus electrolytes (PEG+E) solution and two 5-milligram bisacodyl tablets. (HalfLytely for Bowel Preparation for Colonoscopy) and (HalfLytely for Bowel Preparation for Colonoscopy – Split Dose)

The new Prepopik reduces the amount of treatment liquid the patient must drink from a little over 2 quarts (67 ounces) to 10 ounces. However, after drinking the prep, patients need to drink lots of water or clear liquids — five 8 ounce glasses after the first Prepopik dose and three 8 ounce glasses after the second. Read the rest of this entry »

TO EAT OR NOT TO EAT…DURING CHEMOTHERAPY

To humbly paraphrase Shakespeare, the question is “whether ‘tis better to…ban sugar from your diet, or bulk up on high-protein meals…” The internet is full of raging debates, fervid testimonials and opinions about what you should or shouldn’t eat when you’re being treated for cancer.

 One of the most common chat topics is whether you should cut out ‘sugar’ to decrease the amount of “fuel” available for voracious cancer cells.

If only cancer, and nutrition, were so simple. But every kind of calorie is fuel, every cell uses fuel, and cells become cancerous in many different ways.  

But thankfully, scientists are working hard to shed more light (than heat) on the role that nutrients might play in cancer cells—and they’re coming up with some tantalizing clues, according to the most recent National Cancer Institute Cancer Bulletin (July 10 2012). Read the rest of this entry »

Older Cancer Patients Often Undertreated for Severe Pain

Even when suffering severe pain, one-third of older cancer patients were not taking the strongest painkillers (opiods such as morphine, oxycodone or fentanyl) that could have helped ease that pain, according to a recent large Canadian study.

The most likely reasons were that physicians were not prescribing the medicines, or that the older patients were afraid of side effects, the researchers wrote in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (April 1 2012).

“Cancer pain is common, and its undertreatment is well described,” wrote the study authors, citing multiple previous studies including a worldwide 2008 literature review showing that half of patients with cancer have pain were undertreated, even though studies also show that the vast majority of cancer patients could achieve pain relief with simple drug therapy.

Read the rest of this entry »

 ”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness….”   –The Declaration of Independence

Although I might want to edit Thomas Jefferson’s words to say “…all men and women and children are created equal,” it seems like we all can unify around the rights of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. ”

Each and everyone of you in the Fight Colorectal Cancer community are striving every day to uphold every person’s ability to live fully no matter where you are on cancer’s journey, to regain liberty from worry or pain or illness, and to pursue happiness.

We salute you all–whether you’re sitting in 90-degree heat on a roadside determined to enjoy the parade despite side effects from chemo; whether you’re surrounded by friends and family at a boisterous picnic, or you’re quietly observing the holiday by nursing someone in a hushed hospital room; or whether you don’t know what comes next but that you find joy, in this moment, by hugging a child tight and gazing up with awe at the fleeting beauty of fireworks in the sky.

And especially we salute–and thank from the bottom of our hearts–all those men and women serving in the military across the world to protect our freedoms and our Rights.

The Declaration of Independence ends with a phrase that, I think, sums up the spirit of this amazing Fight Colorectal Cancer community:

“….We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”