I passed the article on to my Dr. at City of Hope, I'll ask him his thoughts about it when I see him next month. As I see it, cannabis based products may have a role in achieving remission.
To me the question is what's needed to sustain the remission. I remain on Chemo, and may for the rest of my life, because of the fact that they know that a much higher percentage of patients will come out of remission if they don't continue on the chemo. Perhaps cannabis could replace chemo in sustaining remissions, but the problem is, if it doesn't, can they do it again.
If OWCP's sublingual tablet, or another way of administering cannabis, could bring remissions quicker, that should be verified in trials in a few years. On the other hand, the question of sustaining remissions could take many years, or decades to verify when compared with remaining on chemo. I frankly would love to get off the chemo, if it were safe to do so, but the data to date says, stay on it. At my age the Dr. doesn't want to take chances that would require putting me back in remission. Many leading cancer institution's wouldn't do stem cells at my age, and during treatment I've met several people from all over the U.S. who were my age, or older and were successful at COH with stem cells after being turned down at other top notch institutions.
My Dr. has also been a leader at T-cell research. I met a patient who came out of remission after about 5 years who received stem cells the same day I did, but they were his own, two days later he got his modified T-cells as well, he was doing great and seeing the Dr. less frequently than I did because the concern of rejection from his own cells wasn't a concern. If the day comes where they could harvest your own stem cells and eliminate any defective ones the entire process of stem cell transplantation's would be greatly simplified, as rejection could largely eliminated. I do believe this will be more likely in the future, but for now it's dependent on finding the best match. I hope that cannabis based drugs play a part in making this process better as well, but by itself, it won't be the cure.
Gary
To me the question is what's needed to sustain the remission. I remain on Chemo, and may for the rest of my life, because of the fact that they know that a much higher percentage of patients will come out of remission if they don't continue on the chemo. Perhaps cannabis could replace chemo in sustaining remissions, but the problem is, if it doesn't, can they do it again.
If OWCP's sublingual tablet, or another way of administering cannabis, could bring remissions quicker, that should be verified in trials in a few years. On the other hand, the question of sustaining remissions could take many years, or decades to verify when compared with remaining on chemo. I frankly would love to get off the chemo, if it were safe to do so, but the data to date says, stay on it. At my age the Dr. doesn't want to take chances that would require putting me back in remission. Many leading cancer institution's wouldn't do stem cells at my age, and during treatment I've met several people from all over the U.S. who were my age, or older and were successful at COH with stem cells after being turned down at other top notch institutions.
My Dr. has also been a leader at T-cell research. I met a patient who came out of remission after about 5 years who received stem cells the same day I did, but they were his own, two days later he got his modified T-cells as well, he was doing great and seeing the Dr. less frequently than I did because the concern of rejection from his own cells wasn't a concern. If the day comes where they could harvest your own stem cells and eliminate any defective ones the entire process of stem cell transplantation's would be greatly simplified, as rejection could largely eliminated. I do believe this will be more likely in the future, but for now it's dependent on finding the best match. I hope that cannabis based drugs play a part in making this process better as well, but by itself, it won't be the cure.
Gary
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