Getting the second opinion

We went to the City of Hope yesterday and saw two doctors. One took more information from me and told us a lot about the treatments while the other was sort of the #2 man on the kidney cancer team there (which is about 20 doctors). They have an interesting trial going on, that I qualify for, but it would make more sense if I had already done a couple of the FDA accepted treatments. The trial involves giving you two medications: everyone gets this newer one that attacks tumor vein attachments (for nourishment). Some people in the trial will get Interferon (which is sort of like Interleukin) and others will get a medication like Sutent that attacks tumor cell receptors.

Dr. Pal said that Dr. Quinn is a great doctor and that I would be in the very good hands. He said that the high dose Interleukin-2 was the best initial option for a healthy patient like me in that it is the only treatment with evidence that it can produce a "durable" response (which a layman might call a cure although you are never "cured" of cancer since you do need to be checked very regularly). Other medications are very promising but too new to know how many years they might work.

City of Hope does not yet offer HD IL-2 treatment such as USC offers although they are putting together a program to do it. It is very nurse intensive because of the close watch they have to keep you under.

This was all very reassuring because it reaffirmed what we already knew and confirmed that the treatment suggested by St. Jude's Tumor Board and Dr. Quinn of USC was the best way to go.