My brother is thinking of trying cesium chloride for his ter,minal stage four cancer neck - does anybody have any experience? Any ideas? We will try just about anything at this point in time!

Gwen
Welcome to the forum. I'm sorry to hear about your brothers condition. Can you give any more detail on what treatment he's undergone? Stage IV doesn't mean terminal; I had a stage IV cancer in my jaw, and I'm doing real well, all things considered.

I can't tell you whether Cesium Chloride is the right choice to make; I can tell you an unproven and unendorsed treatment like that would not have been a choice I would have made, but that's me. Quackwatch considers it to be a highly questionable and unsubstantiated.

Proven treatments are just that; proven. There aren't many success stories with alternative treatments that can be verified, for pretty good reason. Best of luck with your decisions
Wayne

Gwen,

Wayne, Spoken like a true statesman.

You are a lot nicer about this then I.

I have some very strong feeling about this so here they are.

A little while after I was out of treatment, my doctors asked me to speak to a stage IV gentleman (like myself) who was absolutely convinced that the holistic healing was the way to go and the standard treatment(Phase II Clinical at the time) was the worst thing he could have done. Seems he had a friend in the vitamin business. Hmmmm

This is how I approached it since he was not listening to the doctors and they were getting very concern that his tumor/mets were continuing to grow (and they were):

I made a bet with him. The bet was this:
Give your plan a month at the latest (the doctors didn

Hi Gwen and welcome to the forum. Cancer makes people feel vulnerable and it always seems like there has to be a better way than the radical conventional treatments. I haven't seen good results with alternative treatments. You mentioned that your brother's condition is terminal, is that what the doctor has told you? If that is the case did he already have conventional treatments and did that fail or did he have a recurrence?

There's a great deal of misinformation on whether advanced stages of cancer are always terminal and they are NOT. However, they are always life threatening and can progress to a terminal stage if left untreated. Even in terminal stages some people reach a status quo with palliative treaments and survive a couple of years. Please remember that there is no universal profile for any of us so the answer to all of this is it depends.

How long has your brother had cancer, what treatments has he had and why are they saying his condition is terminal?

Regards JoAnne

Thanks everyone for all the good advice. He had squamous cell carcinoma of his tongue in 2005 and had a resecton of the left anterior tongue. It recurred in his neck and on 8/06 had a left modified radical neck dissection/tumor removed/ measuring 9.5 x 1.4 x 1.4. 10 lymph nodes positive. He had one single chemo treatment and had such a severe reaction that he decided to try alternaive treatment. In November, he spent three weeks at the PARCELSUS CLINIC in Switzerland only to return to the States with a tumor that is aggressiveand is spreading rapidly. They are doing chemo and radiation now but insist it is just palliative. But, none of his family believes it is fatal and we are searching for something to try and save him. Any ideas would be great.

Where is he being treated?

Thanks for the extra info Gwen. As I said in my previous post, alternative treatments seldom become main streatmand accepted for very good reason.

Chemo cn be exremely difficult...they are poisoning your body, in an attempt to kill the invading cancer. Yes, it makes you really sick. I'm surprised that your brothers MO didn't mitigate the side effects for him more effectively. They did him a huge disservice if they didn't argue the long term gain vs the short term difficulty.

Treating any cancer, and I think oral cancer is one of the worst, treatment wise, is tough. Some of the treatment was incredibly difficult, but the alternative was not acceptable. There is NO easy way through treatment.

If his Doctor is saying that all that can be done is pallitive treatment now, there is nothing stopping you from getting another opinion. It may be the same, it may not, but at least you have more information.

One thing, please. Have him go to a comprehensive cancer care facility, and talk to a mainstream conventional practioner. The alternative treatments have by all indications done nothing but allow the demon the time it needed to grow without being hindered by effective treatment technigues. Its time to really DO something about the cancer that works.
Good luck
Wayne

Thanks for the info! He is in Albuquerque New Mexico. Not exactly a hotbed for cancer treatment.... I will get more details about the type of treatment, etc....

Gwen --

You may wish t seriously consider having your brother go to one of the top CCCs for head and neck cancer -- for him teh closest would be MD Anderson in Houston -- and get a consult with their experts as to whether he would benefit from a clinical trial or perhaps, a different approach than is available to him in NM. If he feels up to it, that is.

Most of the large centers have special hotel rates, will arrange accommodation and help with transport (as will the ACS) for folks like your brother. I know at Hopkins there were several advanced, recurrent patients from quite a distance coming in for treatment.

At the very least this will give your family the feeling that they have done as much as possible to help.

What chemo treatment did they give your brother? There are a variety of agents available, some can cause severe reactions in certain people (esp. Taxol and cisplatin) while others are much easier to handle (e.g. carboplatin). There are also two EGFr drugs, one available clinically (Erbitux) and another in widespread clinical trails (Tarceva). These have proved helpful in *some* cases of advanced, recurrent disease.

Best of luck,
Gail

There are 'hospitality apartments' about 4 blocks south of the main MD Anderson treatment center too. If you decide to go to Houston (MDA), call 713.790.9120 to get more info, and get on the list. . .which is long.

My fiance' was on the list for 2 months before getting in but, he's been there 4 about 3 weeks now and it's SO much more 'homey' than the HAP Hotel (arranged by Radiology Social Worker, to stay during daily rad treatmets).