I recently returned from a trip through the Baltic and Eastern European countries. I don't know how many of you have visited Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Hungary and the Czech Republic but these are places that love their yogurt, baked breads, pastries and farm fresh eggs (I could go on about beer, wine, etc, but you get the point). I'm usually quite TAS'D about my diet: when it gets down to it, I eat to live not live to eat, as many “foodie's” seem to do nowadays, so I try to contain my animal appetites when away from home. However, in Bulgaria, for example, breakfast usually had available three kinds of yogurt; freshly baked bread made from different grains and one of my favorites, muesli soaked overnight in milk with plenty of fresh fruits. So my diet was high carb, high sugar lots of dairy and eggs (I love poached eggs).
When I returned to the U.S. It was just in time for a visit to the oncologist. I was more than nervous about this visit considering all of the excursions I had taken from my usual diet and thought that I would have to pay dearly for it in terms of PSA , HA1c cholesterol
(Oh, yes, I also sample a lot of cheese).
I had also been keeping up on the HealthUnlocked posts where I read a number of interesting posts regarding the immune system. Some people were taking Dukoral, and Rigvir (the ECHO-7 virus), others, “the Werewolves” as I refer to them, were howling about their ingesting canine medication and how effective it might be. I have always been prone to the “Vampires” (we actually visited Transylvania the home of Vlad the Impaler from whom Bram Stoker is said to have gotten his model, Dracula). I like the idea of having one's blood, drawn, then fortified and returned to one's body. I have always considered Provenge something like Norton's Virus Protection: it silently runs in the background doing its thing. I had previously asked my oncologist about Dukoral and Regvir, but since these drugs are only available in Europe and Canada, there wasn't much he could do. As to the canine meds, well....Rather than waiting for the inevitable, I asked him if there wasn't a way he knew that I could boost my immune system. I presently take no medications for Pca other than Avodart. He considered my question a minute and then answered “Leukine.” Since my white blood cell count, as far back as my records show, has always been low, sometimes out of range low, he thought he could probably get the medication for me.
As I understand it, Leukine delivers a granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) which is good for marshalling the troops to the tumor sites, but it generally doesn't weaponize them, not an optimal solution. What would be needed would be a Provenge booster which I found. I called Dendreon to speak with the chief pharmacist. At first, there was confusion over the study I cited: she wasn't familiar with it. However, I finally found out that Dendreon had had its own study of a booster for Provenge. Unfortunately, there were only 18 people in the trial and, even though the results were encouraging, Medicare would never pay for such a small study, considering that the cost for their booster is around $50,000. If I could get a guarantee that this would extend my life X-number of years, maybe we could follow Tom Selleck's advice a get a reverse mortgage home loan. In any case, unless there is someone in this forum who can loan me that amount at a very low rate of interest, that's not going to happen. However, the booster vaccine to which I was referring, pTVG-HP DNA Booster Vaccine, recently concluded its trial which appears to have been successful, but I don't think its currently available for prime time.
Questions:
1Anyone with Leukine experience?
2Any suggestions for ways to arm the troops?
Oh yeah, after all of that indulgence, my PSA went down!
Slowly Rising PSA and Chromogranin-A
Less fatigue
Doctor is suggesting Provenge 
