Treatment

My test results turned out as the doctors thought: kidney cancer cells in my lungs. The doctors of the Tumor Board decided that it would not be helpful at this time to remove my kidney. The tumor "grows into" you and is not easy to get out. It's risky and a trauma on your body. The "modern" view, they say, is to leave it in and do systemic therapy like chemo or immuno therapy.

Normally they would start me off with Sutent pills which attack the tumor by attacking tumor cell receptors and it attacks the process in which the tumor attached to veins to sustain itself. There are a few medications and each has a certain chance of working. Normally they don't use IL-2, an old and powerful immuno therapy medication that can have dramatic results for the small percentage of people it works for but is very toxic. My doctor is going to talk to the same doctor that I was seeking my 2nd opinion from to see what he thinks of using IL-2 on me (which was brought up but not concluded upon at the Tumor Board). The strategy is that you use the difficult therapy, that will probably have me in the hospital off and on, at the beginning when I'm strongest. Later on, after other therapies, I will be somewhat compromised. There are many more medications than there used to be but they are still limited in number (6). If the others fail, I will be wishing that I tried IL-2. The chances of it working are under 10% (from what I read) but that is a 10% that, perhaps, I can't afford to throw away.

My doctor ordered the Sutent for me but is going to talk to the USC doctor (David I Quinn) to get his input on using IL-2 (Interluekin). If Dr. Quinn thinks that I should try the IL-2, I should be starting that within a couple weeks. Otherwise, I'll be on the Sutent pills.

Here's a Wiki piece on IL-2: click here. Here is a Wiki piece on Sutent: click here.