Oncologist Appointment

One of my family members reminded me to update everyone...I had an appointment on Monday with my oncologist...I actually wrote most of my previous blog post while waiting to be admitted into his office.

Alhamdulilah, it was pretty routine. The one new development was my oncologist said there's an opening in an experimental trial Sloan Kettering is running on patients diagnosed with melanoma, but who don't have any visible tumors after surgery. From what I understood, the vaccine is supposed to boost the immune system to help it fight cancerous cells. It is administered through electric shocks (sounds like fun), and they haven't observed any big side-effects except that patients' arms fly up uncontrollably when the shock is administered.

The researchers are administering the experiment on patients with a particular blood and tissue type, so I had some blood drawn to see if I would even be eligible for the vaccine. Insha'allah it will take about 3 to 4 weeks to see the results, and determine if I qualify for the trial. I'm kind of mentally holding off of making a decision about participating until I see if I'm eligible.

The doctor said there are about 15-20 people participating in the trial right now. From what I understood, the trial would consist of lengthy doctor's visits every 3 weeks. The thing is, the doctors won't be able to measure any results from the experiment until about a year later.

I'm not sure how I feel about taking part in the experiment. When the doctor first explained it, my gut reaction was to say no to anything unnatural...and the electric shocks sounded as far from natural as possible. But another part of me thinks I need to do everything that is scientifically possible to help rid me of this disease.

Insha'allah I have an appointment with my surgeon tomorrow, I'll update you guys if anything interesting happens there :)