I had an interesting time on the radio today–and afterwards. I did about 15 minutes on WSAR, a local radio station, for Friday night’s Relay For Life of Greater Fall River’s Kick-Off event.

I worked in radio about 40 years ago when my teaching job was not really paying enough to make ends meet. I was amazed by how little had changed in that time. The microphones were a little bigger. There were two people in the room where we generally only had one in the old days. And the traffic report was done using computers. On the surface, at least, very little had changed.

I’m sure beneath the surface technology has changed the business in many ways. But the basic

workings of host and guest in local radio has not changed very much.

Afterwards we talked for a few minutes off-air about cancer in general and NETs in specific. From the description one of the hosts gave me of a cancer a friend had died from it sounded as though she had been an undiagnosed case of carcinoid syndrome. Something had attacked the heart in the process of the disease–and it sounded a lot like what had happened to Jane.

Things in cancer have changed over the last four decades. We no longer talk about what used to be called “The Big C” in the hushed tones we once did. There are forms of cancer we have made real strides against. Some cancers are no longer the absolute death sentence they once were. I was online with ACS CAN last night during the State of the Union and the number of seven, eight, nine, and ten or more years survivors was astonishing.

But there are cancers where our progress has been less stellar. NET/CS is one of those. While we have made great strides in the last two years in terms of our understanding of the disease, our ability to find it is still very limited. Most that

are discovered early enough for a surgical cure are found purely by accident. For the rest, we have no real cure–only a series of holding actions that can slow down the progress of the disease but not eradicate it.

PRRT shows promise, but the trials that lead to approval by the FDA have only just begun in the US. In the meantime, patients like Sunny Carney end up traveling to Europe on their own dime–paying $50-$75,000 for a treatment Europe says works like nothing else in our arsenal.

ACS talks about doubling the research to double the cures. Doubling the research means spending a lot more money than we do now. We need to find ways to double the money we spend on NET/CS research–and then double it again. That sounds like a lot, but the first doubling only amounts to $2.5 million–a tiny fraction of the money that will be raised this year for the fight against breast cancer–or to fund presidential campaigns.

But equally important is educating primary care doctors about what to look for. If we can catch enough cases early enough that surgery can cure rather than just delay, we can save a lot of misery.