December
2006
Official: Dormant Melanoma
I trust everyone is doing ok over the holidays? I can imagine that to many people going through any kind of uncertainty the best gift you got this year was a tomorrow and may we live the whole of the coming year with that perspective.
There is a reason for this post, because just before the holidays I was invited to a radio interview about some extremely important news about later stage melanomas and how the cancer spreads. Although I was dialed in we ran out of air time for the story but the scientists are figuring it out. This is the story Cell protein holds key to melanoma spread, and here is an excerpt:
“When the level of this protein inside a melanoma cell drops, the cancer cell changes its behaviour: it stops growing and ‘blends in’ with its neighbours. This makes it less likely to be affected by chemotherapy drugs, which are designed to target fast-growing cells.”
It was a story of hope, but it did however send a bit of a shiver down my spine because not only am I in this boat, I know many people, many young people who are too and the general perspective the people around us have is that once the doctors cut the mole out the cancer is cured, that it’s happy days from there on. Whereas most of us know it’s only the start of an epic story, our own war on terror, because as suggested by this research the cancer almost knows it’s under attack and blends in, gets its head down and floats about as slowly as the original mole grew. I often thought of it as an ambush waiting to attack and it’s easy for anyone to say carry on with your life as normal but they aren’t living with this knowledge. Finally we all have some evidence to back up our concerns and finally the doctors are getting a grasp on why melanoma isn’t gone when it’s “gone”.
