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PeopleBeatingCancer

Recently Diagnosed or Relapsed? Stop Looking For a Miracle Cure, and Use Evidence-Based Therapies To Enhance Your Treatment and Prolong Your Remission

Multiple Myeloma an incurable disease, but I have spent the last 25 years in remission using a blend of conventional oncology and evidence-based nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle therapies from peer-reviewed studies that your oncologist probably hasn't told you about.

Click the orange button to the right to learn more about what you can start doing today.

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Myeloma Stages- Diagnosis, Prognosis

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Pre-Myeloma,  Stage I,II,III- Your Diagnosis and symptoms are the key to your Prognosis-

The phrase “you have cancer” strikes fear into the hearts of most everyone. The fact is, it doesn’t have to. Tens of thousands of cancer diagnoses annually may result in nothing more than “active surveillance” or minor surgery and you are cancer-free.

A cancer diagnosis of monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance or smoldering multiple myeloma  (MGUS, SMM) will have a completely different prognosis or average outcome compared to a diagnosis of a stage 1, 2 or 3 in multiple myeloma.

Your therapy considerations or choices will be very different depending on your specific diagnosis.

According to the American Cancer Society, the average five year survival rate for people diagnosed with MM at stage 3 is 44 months and the average five year survival rate for stage 1 is “has not been reached.” My guess is that newly diagnosed MMers will want to know their stage at diagnosis considering these wide survival rates…

The key? Do your homework to understand what diagnoses lead to which possible outcomes:

  • Is a watch and wait (active surveillance) approach better for you? If you haven’t gotten a second opinion yet, get one! Click here to for a list of seven questions that must be answered at a second opinion appointment– or any appointment.
  • Can surgery remove all of the cancer and eliminate the need for chemotherapy or radiation? When I was first diagnosed I had a single plasmacytoma. I did not undergo chemo until I progressed to full blown MM.  Toxic therapies usually lead to side-effects.
  •  How old is the patient? How aggressive is the multiple myeloma?
  • Will the patient’s genetic make-up guide the recommended therapy? Multiple Myeloma is actually eight different cancers. All with genetic sub typing.
  • What integrative treatments will best support your chosen therapy? Here is the number one supplement that keeps me cancer free.
  • What therapies complement or enhance your situation? Exercise and nutrition will help your induction therapy to work better aka be more effective.
  • Most importantly, what does the patient want?

The best way to determine the best course of action if for the cancer patient/caregiver to research the diagnosis and talk to his/her oncologist as well as an oncologist who specializes in multiple myeloma.

Consulting with a MM specialist, plus living an anti-MM lifestyle through nutrition, supplementation, exercise, etc. is the best way you can improve your prognosis.

Have you been diagnosed with pre-myeloma (MGUS, SMM) or full blown multiple myeloma, stage I,II, or III? What is your prognosis? What is your therapy plan?

Scroll down the page, post a question or comment and I will reply to you ASAP.

Thank you,

David Emerson

  • MM survivor,
  • MM Cancer Coach,
  •  Director PeopleBeatingCancer

Recommended Reading:

Multiple Myeloma 2018 Update – Why Do People Beat the Average Myeloma Life Expectancy Prognosis?  Or How To Improve Your Multiple Myeloma Survival Rate!

“I have updated this post several times, and it has been very helpful to many in the myeloma patient community.  I believe one key area which could have the greatest impact on patient survival is the improved dissemination of the myeloma specialist approved best treatments for each individual patient.

The 20% of myeloma patients who see a myeloma specialist or consult with one, are provided with the best current treatment knowledge, but this leaves the remaining 80% underserved.  How then do we make this happen…”

With 30,000 new cases of multiple myeloma in the USA, we can estimate the total number of patients in just the USA at 165,000. If we can move the average life expectancy from 5.5 years to 11 years by having myeloma specialists guide your care, we could save 165,000 times 5.5, or 907,500 years of LIFE.  Many times more if we include the entire world….”

Cancer Patients Unaware of Personalized Medicine Choices

“Although the cancer field is marching on toward personalized medicine, with drugs being targeted to specific tumors, many patients are unaware that this revolution is taking place, a new survey shows.

“Clearly, there remains a need for patients to be better informed about personalized medicine, which is a shared responsibility amongst the multidisciplinary healthcare team, patient support groups, and the media…” 

 

 

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13 comments
Myeloma Diagnosis, Prognosis, Cured? - PeopleBeatingCancer says a few months ago

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Maxine says 8 years ago

Oh David – thank you soooo much. You are the only person that I have heard from about this and I am so eager to here whatever you can find. At this point I’m thinking that I may opt for the chemo and radiation instead of a lobectomy as I fear my post operative surgery will leave me an invalid and copd is progressive as well so how long would I live and how will my life be. Please forward anything else you can find and thank you again so much.

Reply
    David Emerson says 8 years ago

    Hi Maxine-

    Okay, if you are feeling more comfortable with chemo and radiation as your therapy, please read the links below that talk about “integrative” therapies- if your surgeon talked about the high probability of relapse, consider nutritional supplementation to enhance your chemo and radiation while you reduce the toxicity. These supplements may help reduce the risk of relapse.

    If you are interested, email me the names of the chemotherapies you will take and I can research specific supplements that may help.

    Curcumin and NSCLC-
    Resveritrol and NSCLC-
    Grape Seed Extract and NSCLC-
    Milk thistle and NSCLC-

    Let me know if you have any questions- thanks – David Emerson

    Reply
Maxine says 8 years ago

I have non small cell lung cancer squiemish stage 11A and have a dilemma. I also have copd with 50% lung capacity in each lung. If I opt for surgery, there’s no guarantee that I won’t be on oxygen after surgery. I can also have radiation with chemotherapy instead of surgery. I was told by the thoracic surgeon that my prognosis with surgery is much better 50% then the radiation and chemo and he said that those other procedure prognosis would be in the single digit and would most likely come back. I just don’t know what to do. Does anyone have copd and removal of lower left lobe of the lung, a lobectomy which the surgeon wants to do and what is the quality of their life afterwards (are they on oxygen full-time. Are there any survivors beyond five -years with the same type of cancer that I have? Please help.

Reply
    David Emerson says 8 years ago

    Hi Maxine-
    I am sorry to read of your cancer diagnosis. I will write my comments below based on my thinking that “non small cell lung cancer squiemish stage 11A” is actually “non small cell lung cancer squamous cell stage 1A. If in fact your diagnosis was NSCLC of stage 1a, then surgery may be curative. I believe that the definition of stage 1A means that your tumor is less than 3 centimeters. This is good.

    Now, on to your choices. Yes, surgical removal of the tumor has a better prognosis than chemo and radiation. But as you point out, you already suffer from COPD and post surgical lung function is very important to you.

    Please read the info linked and excerpted below about cryotherapy for nsclc- this article may apply to you-

    “Cryosurgery is suited for patients with lung cancer who are not considered for lung resection because… poor respiratory function and with tumor recurrence following radiotherapy, chemotherapy or lung resection, and those patients who have localized lung cancer but refuse to receive operative therapy….
    Cryosurgery for lung cancer

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3426750/

    I must research more- I will email you again tomorrow- thanks and hang in there-

    David Emerson

    Reply
David Emerson says 8 years ago

Hi Lucy-
I am sorry to read of your husband’s CRC diagnosis. However you seem to be aware of many of the difficult issues. I will try to break down your post to address each concern. This will be a long reply- please be sure to ask me to clarify any questions you may have.

First and foremost is whether or not your husband’s cancer has spread to other organs or lymph nodes. You say the stage is “possibly 3c.” The staging relates to the aggressiveness of his treatment. More chemo is more toxic- more toxicity is risked due to how much his cancer has spread. For the sake of this reply I will assume that your husband’s CRC is “locally advanced operable colon cancer. ”

While I am conservative about the use of toxic anything in cancer therapy, I acknowledge that alternative therapies do NOT act fast enough to treat a serious or advanced stage. Shrinking the tumor is secondary to your husband’s overall survival.

1)”he undergo chemo and radiation before the surgery to reduce the size…” pre-adjuvant chemo is the method to attempt to shrink tumors before surgery. I will link studies below to highlight the risks/benefits of this approach.

This is an excerpt from a study that I think applies to your-
“Although lacking disease progression or survival outcomes, results from this feasibility study showed significant tumor downstaging compared with the postoperative group (P=0.04). There was also less apical node involvement (1% vs. 20%, P<0.0001) and fewer positive margins (4% vs. 20%, P=0.002). Blinded centrally scored tumor regression grading showed moderate or greater regression of 31% vs. 2% (P=0.0001), favoring the preoperative group. The study concluded that preoperative chemotherapy in locally advanced operable primary colon cancer was feasible with acceptable toxicity and perioperative morbidity."
To read this study cut and paste this url into your browser- http://www.atmjournal.org/article/view/1614/2301

Based on my experience “alternative” therapies will not achieve the results you need. Please consider integrative therapies with those pre or neo adjuvant chemotherapy to “downstage” your husband’s cancer. I will link therapies below- Let me know if your proposed cancer therapies are different from the one’s I list.
Grapeseed Extract-

Below is an excerpt from a list of integrative therapies for a standard colon cancer chemo regimen. I hope these integrative therapies apply- the studies cite the ability to REDUCE toxicity while ENHANCING efficacy of the chemotherapy.

I excerpted the info above not because you mentioned “Bevacizumab (Avastin)” but because Avastin is an angiogenesis inhibitor. Curcumin, omega 3 fatty acids, resveritrol, vitamin d3, milk thistle, green tea extract, grape seed extract are natural angiogenesis inhibitors (that I have been taking for years).

http://www.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/colon-cancer/chemotherapy.html

Further, angiogenesis inhibitors have been show to both enhance conventional chemo while they reduce toxicity. I will excerpt info below.
5-FU and curcumin-

5-FU and green tea extract-

5-FU and omega 3 fatty acids-

Oxaliplatin and curcumin-

https://www.google.com/search?q=5-Fluorouracil%2C+curcumin&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb#channel=sb&q=neuropathy+curcumin+oxaliplatin&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
Oxaliplatin and green tea extract-
Oxaliplatin and omega 3s

https://www.google.com/search?q=5-Fluorouracil%2C+curcumin&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb#channel=sb&q=5-fluorouracil+green+tea+extract&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

Lucy- I have tried to address the main issues. Please reply if you have questions or comments. Hang in there.

David Emerson

Reply
    Lucy says 7 years ago

    Please delete my posting for privacy reasons. Thank you.

    Reply
      David Emerson says 7 years ago

      Deleted.

      Reply
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