A Glimmer Of Hope

Yesterday as the day progressed, I was not feeling too well. My energy levels was rather low and my restless legs seems to be plaguing me all day and I had to constantly massage it. My chest felt quite congested and was starting to get nauseated. My stomach felt full, yet hungry at the same time. It was a lousy feeling.

After dinner last night, I decided to up the stakes a bit. I know there have been some blockages in the veins (near the Popliteal fossa area) just behind the knee joints. I thought why not do something to improve the blood flow? Its very painful to massage the veins and the strength of my own thumb alone was not sufficient. So I use the handle of a steel spoon to massage the veins. At certain spots, there are bubble like formations inside the veins that are creating the blockage. It was very painful to massage the little bubbles away but it did help to improve the blood flow. It will take many more massages to remove the little bubbles completely from both legs. After the massage, I went to bed at around 10.30pm and felt some improvements to my restless legs problem. For the first time in two months over, I managed to sleep by 11pm.

Rhus Verniciflua Stokes (aRVS) Update
I contacted Mr. Lee Sook Yung of Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Korea by email on Monday and got a prompt respond from him the next day. He said that the aRVS extract is not a commercial drug yet, it is prescribed only in the clinic of his hospital. He has requested me for more detail information about my cancer and history.

I have since replied him by attaching my radiologist report and blood test for his appraisal.

A little more information about this alternative treatment when compared to conventional treatment. Traditional Korean Cancer Treatment perceives cancer as a whole body environmental disease; treats the physical, emotional, and spiritual environment of a patient, which was considered as causes of cancer to the patient. The treatment includes Traditional Korean herbs and acupuncture, control the balance between Qi-Blood and organs.

Rhus Verniciflua Stokes (picture), namely lacquer tree, grows wild in East Asia including China, Japan, and Korea. Its wood and sap have been used in various purposes. As a oriental medicinal herb, its character is reported to be warm, its taste is hot, and it contains toxin. It has effects of breaking blood clots and expelling stasis; resolving accumulation; killing worms, so it has been used in resolving the mass made from static blood, aggregation-accumulation, and rocky mass/cancer. However its medical use has been limited, because of its resinous phenolic compound, urushiol, which can cause severe allergic dermatitis in some individuals.

Rhus Verniciflua Stokes shows anti-cancer effect in Lewis lung carcinoma cell, osteosarcoma, breast cancer cell, ovarian cancer cell, lymphoma, and hepatic cell. Anti-cancer and anti-oxidant effects are reported due to its flavonids, such as butein, fisetin, fustin, and sulfuretin from Rhus Verniciflua, Rhus Verniciflua inhibits migration activity in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC), which is stimulated by vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF).

The majority (75-85%) of Renal Cell Carcinoma(RCC) exhibits clear cell histology and often presents with metastatic diseases (picture shows a right radical nephrectomy of 12cm kidney tumor mass). The most common sites of metastatic disease are the lungs (20-30%), and unresectable lung metastatic disease is associated with a poor outcome. Five-year survival rate of RCC with metastatic disease is reported to be 0-5%, and its response rate to chemotherapy is only 4-6%. Metastatic RCC is sensitive to immunotherapy, but its response rate is only 10-20%. Substantial toxicity of immunotherapy occurs with high-dose Interleukin-2 (IL-2), lfa-interferon (α-IFN), or combination of low dose IL-2 plus α-IFN, and impact of immunotherapy is limited in increasing survival period. Recently signal ransduction inhibitors are introduced and especially tyrosin kinase inhibitors such as sunitinib(Sutent®) and sorafenib(Nexavar®) are used for the treatment of RCC. Objective response rate of sunitinib in two phase II trials are 25.5 % (95% CI, 17.5-34.9) and 36.5% (95% CI, 24.7-49.6) retrospectively, which is higher than those of cytokines. However, its times of progression is limited to 11 months and its impact on overall survival has not reported yet.

A patient with RCC with multiple lung metastases showed nearly complete response after treated with Traditional Korean Cancer Treatment including Rhus Verniciflua Stokes Extracts. This result indicates that Traditional Korean Cancer Treatment could maintain the quality of life who has cancer without significant adverse reaction. This case presents that Traditional Korean Cancer Treatment may be a promising alternative for the management of unresectable RCC with multiple lung metastases.

Although they have reported two successful RCC treatment cases, this is still far better than no successes from my 7 specialist doctors from 6 different hospitals in two countries. There are no guarantees, only a glimmer of hope.