I know that Farrah did not have OC, but I was saddened to hear of her death from cancer today. I remember watching her documentary about a month ago, and thanking God that Ron was not that bad. I could have never guessed that Ron would die before she did. It just goes to show that you never know what will happen with this &*(& disease.
Lori

Lori,

First of all please accept my deepest sympathy for the loss of your beloved husband Ron, to this terrible disease.

I watched most of the Farrah documentary from last month and the ABC special last night as well the local ABC news broadcast at 11 PM last night.

Since I haven't made it through all of the documentary I'm not sure if there is any reference to the fact that most anal cancers are HPV+. I did notice that that fact was conspicuously missing from the 1 hour special 20/20 last night. Interestingly, the local news Health Watch segment did discuss it.

The HPV risk factors for anal cancer are very similar to those of OC. The subject of HPV being a sexually transmitted virus and it's realtionship to OC, anal cancer and other squamous cell cancers in the body, is one that will take a long time to reach the national air waves in this country.

Jerry

HPV causes cancers of the cervix, anus, penis, vulva, vagina as well as in the oropharyngeal region. It also causes warts.

HPV kills more men in the US than women.

Did you read where Farrah went to Germany and had experimental treatments? That sure didn't help her cause.

She did start with conventional treatments, but at some point, I think right after an almost immediate and more involved recurrence that soon included her liver, chose to go to a clinic in Germany for treatments that involved a derivative of mistletoe plants. These of course couldn't be done in the US as they fall into that netherlands category of alternative treatment without FDA, or peer reviewed clinical trials. I'm unsure if at that point her docs here had told her that there was no more that they could do, and this was a hail Mary pass/attempt to stem things, or if she really believed this was a better choice to make even though there were still conventional treatments that might have helped.

I am surprised that a couple of newscasters are being chastised by people who clearly don't know what's what, for saying that she died from a cancer that was caused by a common STD. In truth that is what happened, the oncogenic versions of HPV are all sexually transmitted, and HPV which is responsible for the vast majority of anal cancers is the most common STD in the US today. I guess some people think that this statement (factual or not) was not politically correct right after her death and her family and friends were mourning her.

I'm not sure that you can tell Jim. Oftentimes new drugs and procedures are tried in Europe because the regulatory issues are not as cumbersome as in the US. The studies and experimental drugs or procedures may well be initiated by US companies as well. The FDA also allows clinical data from overseas studies as long as it meets their investigational criteria.

I wrote this while Brian was writing his post so I didn't realize that she was trying "Mistletoe" therapy. From what I read it was as Brian said, an adjunctive therapy to her conventional treatment which she went through first.

Advanced anal cancer is serious business. It has a tendency to metastesize and is very stealthy so it can be very large by the time it is discovered. My best friends wife had rectal cancer and the tumor weighed 6 lbs. Miraculously she survived. The survival rate is relatively poor. My friends wife had ACC not HPV. Evidently Farrah's was caused by HPV or at least that's what the media is implying. See: http://www.dailypress.com/health/sns-health-farrah-fawcett-anal-cancer,0,5421582.story

WOW a 6 lb tumor> That had to be pure misery in it's rawest form. I ghuess we just never think about things like that happening. But that is one thing I can truthfully say I never even attempted. Thanks for the info Gary about the trial drugs and such.

Believe it or not it was pretty much asymptomatic and was caught by accident when she went in with a different issue. The resulting surgeries were misrable. She had a couple of fistulas that had to be repaired. She has a colostomy bag now.