Almost Perfect

Had an interesting appointment with Dr. Nesselhut Junior yesterday. He is one of the doctors managing and administering my Dendritic Cell vaccine therapy in Duderstadt.

We went over special immunological tests that were done by a Berlin lab during my last month’s visit. These tests looked at the state of my immune system in great detail. It looked at all the different white blood cells, their counts, activation states etc. a very complex report, the likes of which I have not seen before. The longer I am here, the more I realise how much cancer patients are missing out on in Australia.

First thing Dr. Nesselhut did, was to double check the name on the report, to actually confirm that the results were really mine. I think he found it hard to believe. His comment was that everything on the report was normal. For a late stage cancer patient that apparently does not happen, as typically the immune system is out of whack all over the place. Usually they will try to offer therapies to re-balance the immune system, but with me there is apparently nothing that they can do. Seems like yet again I have to be an exception rather than the rule, but in this case I assume that is a good thing.

The report was almost perfect with only NK (Natural Killer) cells being on the low side, but still within the normal range. Go figure.

DC Vaccine

Two days prior to my appointment, the nurses had been infecting me with an NDV virus (No its not an STD), and today was time for my next DC Vaccine shot. (great more needles). Just like this month’s Removab and TACE, the vaccine was surprisingly easy to take. Last time I felt as sick as a dog, could not eat and had bad flu like symptoms lasting about 6 hours. This time nothing. I did feel a little bit of nausea in the evening, but I don’t believe that this was related to the DC vaccine. How unusual. I don’t know if that is good or bad.

It gets better. My infected port was not in a great shape. The scar left over after the implant surgery had opened up, and had been oozing blood and pus for the last 4 days. It refused to heal, and the hole was deep enough that it exposed the port and the catheter. (That’s how I now know that it is light blue in colour, which is way too much information.) To my surprise I woke up in the morning to find the port looking much better with the oozing hole closed over and apparently healing nicely. This is not a coincidence. After my last DC vaccine, my infected port also improved greatly.

I think I am onto something here. The DC vaccine may or may not do anything for my cancer, but it certainly seems like a miracle cure for infections. Something to file away for future reference.

The day had more to offer, but I’ll save that for the next post…