Kidney Cancer Developments

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Kidney Cancer Developments

New Kidney Cancer Developments happen quite frequently. On a regular basis we hear of new promising drugs coming onto the market. None of them have the potential to cure kidney cancer yet, but rather keeping it under control. I just recently read again, that scientist and doctors start to think of kidney cancer as a chronic disease, comparable to diabetes or high blood pressure.

Kidney cancer is weird. Admittedly, I am not an expert, but due to my wife’s breast cancer and my cancer, I did learn quite a bit about the whole topic. It seems that kidney cancer – if caught early – has a very good prognosis for cure. In other words, if the cancer is solely confined to the kidney, it can be taken our surgically and the patient is likely to be fine. Since I received my diagnosis, I have heard of so many people, who had kidney cancer 20 or 30 years ago, had their affected kidney removed and are perfectly fine ever since.

On the other hand, if the cancer has spread beyond the kidney, a cure seems to be very difficult. But due to the available drugs that are targeted cancer agents (they only attack the cancer cells and leave the “good ones” alone), such as Nexavar® (sorafenib), Sutent® (sunitinib), Torisel® (temsirolimus), and Afinitor® (everolimus) – the cancer can be kept at bay for a very long time.

A lot of other kidney cancer warriors I have spoke to told me, that when they received their diagnosis 5-10 years back ago, the outlook was much worse, because of the lack of treatment options available at the time. In the meantime, the whole landscape of kidney cancer treatment has improved significantly. 

I think statistics are very useful. But the numbers are practically useless if someone tries to see where he or she would fit into the picture. To give you an example: given my age and overall health, the odds were extremely favorable to me in NOT getting kidney cancer (about 2% likelihood). Yet, I WAS diagnosed with it.

My point is: don’t get worked up to much over things you read or hear. For instance, just a few minutes ago I read two articles about the “Future of Kidney Cancer”, both coming from reputable sources. However, they couldn’t be any more contradictory to each other. The first one drew a rather dire picture, and the second one makes you almost wish to get kidney cancer after reading. So don’t get sucked into that swamp of – sometimes quite confusing - information that’s available to all of us thank to the invention of the Internet.

I remember very well when my wife and I plowed to the vast breast cancer online data, trying to play doctors. Now please don’t get me wrong. I strongly advocate and recommend to cancer patients to educate them as much as possible. But as for all good studying and research, be careful that you don’t try to interpret things you don’t understand just based on assumptions you make.

Since November of 2001, I am being employed by one of the top Pharmaceutical Companies. I therefore know first hand about the efforts that are being taken by researches, scientist, doctors and everybody else in the industry, to make new remedies or cures available to patients in need. But further to that, I also believe in self-responsibility. There are things you can do to support your body in his battle with the cancer. For example, living a healthy lifestyle and eating the right things. I’m happy to see, that the Pharma Industry as well as the conventional cancer treatment institutions, more and more acknowledge that there is a direct link between nutrition/lifestyle and cancer. Just to give you an example: My company – one of the world leaders in cancer research and development – just recently started a campaign regarding breast cancer prevention. The top three recommendations were: Eat right - and speaking of eating right, please visit this excellent colon health website with tons of useful information around this important topic- , live healthy (exercise and watch your weight), and go to your annual mammograms! 

Some of you might say: Well, that’s for breast-cancer. But kidney-cancer is different. And you’re right, absolutely, kidney-cancer is different. But can a healthy lifestyle and exercise REALLY hurt you in trying to keep your cancer under control? As far as I know, the kidney’s primary job is to filter waste out of the blood to turn it into urine. So by trying to make sure that we don’t load too much waste into our body in the first place, I truly believe that this can’t be detrimental to the situation.

But I’m not here to tell you what you should do or not do. I am only sharing with you my point of view and I completely understand if you disagree with me. The important thing is: you need to find an approach that you believe is the right one for you. Whatever that may look like.

If there’s anything you need, any questions, comments, venting, chatting, arguing, etc. – please send me an email to planetcaravan@gmx.com.

I wish you all the strength you need in your own kidney-cancer journey. God bless You.