Round II - This time I will KILL IT!

[notyoueither]

Kick ass, Pekka!

[N35t0r]

Good luck Pekka

[Ben Kenobi]

Damn. Good luck Pekka.

[-Jrabbit]

A friend of mine has lung cancer. Needless to say, it's serious. She and her husband have had to track down clinical trials themselves. Basically, they were told where and how to look, and what specific genetic markers had to be involved in the trials to be appropriate for her condition.

After weeks of searching (she's been through 4 rounds of chemo/rads since diagnosis last spring), they finally found a trial last week. They are moving to the research site in a couple weeks for treatment.

They told me that all their doctors said the same thing -- that it was up to them to track down and get accepted into a clinical trial. Which I thought was weird, but they were very clear about that part of things. So maybe there's a database somewhere that you can track down...

That's probably not much use, but the only potentially relevant info I have at this point. My thoughts are with you, Pekka.

KILL IT!

[pchang]

My wife did not know of anything at her company, but she recommended http://clinicaltrials.gov

[pchang]

It shows 5 trials recruiting, but none in Finland. You will probably have to travel to get in on one of them.

[pchang]

The one that looked the most promising to me was actually in San Francisco at UCSF.

[Pekka]

The one that looked the most promising to me was actually in San Francisco at UCSF.

Strangely enough I found that one to be most promising as well..

It is strange, once I said I'm finding this psychologically crushing and can I get some help with this? They said, "this is one of the pitfalls we have, the answer is no. You have to enroll to a psychologists as you normally would". I've come to think that the whole idea of having the most awesome medicare system in the world is not so. It's good if you have small things bothering you, everyone gets good care... but if you have big issues, you are basically alone and money can't buy you anything either. You have to search for yourself and go abroad anyway......

Thanks for the link! I'll check these out and fight with my insurance to see if I can get myself somewhere. The one in San Francisco seems like a good idea.

[Pekka]

but they did not show us how or where to search for trials. Just that "there are some but they are not going to help".

[notyoueither]

That does suck, but needn't be one of the limitations of socialised healthcare.

True, the funds are not there to support everyone to experiment with every treatment, but the least they should be able to do is give some guidance on current research for extremely serious conditions where the patient is willing to go outside the system.

In short, that's fvcked up!

[regexcellent]

There is a reason American cancer survival rates are so high. (Private medicine is that reason)

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Reg? No. Not here.

[Uncle Sparky]

I found out back in August that before going into surgery last December for what turned out to be a quintuple bypass, the doctors put my chances of surviving the operation at less than 10%... I've been back at work for 9 months and am doing better than ever, so you too can beat the odds!! Just do it!

[Wiglaf]

They didn't tell you your chances of survival before the surgery?? I don't understand, this is how I would expect Mark Cuban to behave, not a licensed surgeon.

[SlowwHand]

Read up, oh foaming at the mouth one.