NET cancer not only foe

Everyone who reads these posts—or who visits this website—knows I have good reason to hate NET cancer. But I hate cancer in general with equal fervor. I work harder on NET cancer because it took my wife—and because NET cancer gets so little money and attention in the wider world.

Research is the key to it all.

My work with the Fall River Relay for Life grows out of my hatred of cancer generally. The money we raise there does little for NET cancer–and little to raise awareness about NET cancer. But both my sister and sister-in-law are breast cancer survivors. I have former students and colleagues who have battled that, as well as friends who have fought—or are fighting—cervical cancer, uterine cancer, ovarian cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, melanoma, brain cancer, testicular cancer, lung cancer, kidney cancer, bladder cancer, leukemia, colon cancer, stomach cancer, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer…

You get the general idea. Sometimes I think that if there is a cancer I have known someone with it.

Another loss to cancer

Last night an old friend and former colleague succumbed to a brain tumor. He’d had two or three other cancers before that, but the brain cancer is what finally killed him. The last experimental treatment option failed about two months ago—and he had come home to die.

I hate that option…

David and I both wanted to create better schools. We disagreed—sometimes vehemently—about how to make that happen, but we never lost respect for each other in the process and we usually found a compromise that worked.

Cancer does not compromise. You either fight it with everything you have or you lose for certain. Even when you fight it with every weapon you can find it, still, too often, takes your life.

The death option

David and Jane both fought their cancers with every option they could find. In the end, they both killed their cancers the only way they could—by dying and taking it with them.

I hate that option—but too often it is the only option that works. Sometimes—with NET cancer and too many other cancers—it is an option we reach too quickly. And sometimes, it is the only option, period.

Cancer does not compromise.

That’s where we were 60 years ago with childhood leukemia. Today, we can save 90 percent of those who come through the door with that form of cancer.

Forty years ago, that is where we were with breast cancer. Today, too many still die from the disease, but it is not the absolute death sentence it was for the vast majority in the early ‘70s.

Searching for a cure

I cannot predict when we will begin to see real light for brain cancer or NET cancer patients. I know we have made significant progress in understanding both in recent years. But when those new understandings will present us with a cure—or even the beginnings of a cure–is anyone’s guess.

It took 40 years before Sidney Farber’s work on childhood leukemia even started to turn the corner. It may be an equally long time before we start to get a handle on either of these.

I hate cancer in general…

Or it could happen tomorrow. I have not studied brain cancers the way I have NET cancer. I don’t know if there is something similar to the oncolytic virus I have talked about here in recent weeks for brain cancers. I can’t even say the oncolytic virus will even work on NET cancer.

Research is the key to it all. Research will find a cure for brain cancers. Research will find a cure for NET cancer.