Treatment in Germany
8 December 2015
Dear Friends and Family ,Elaine is back home after her first treatment at the Immuno Therapy clinic in Germany. This was the first of 4 scheduled sessions as recommended to achieve maximum efficacy of the treatment regime.
Day one was all about meeting her assigned Doctors and nurses and having blood drawn for an up to date assessment of her general health and blood counts.
Day two was leukapheresis day, where blood is drawn out of one arm, centrifuged to separate the white cells and the red cells re infused into the other arm.The process takes about 3 hours during which they circulate about 6 litres of her blood through the centrifuge and extract approximately 250 cc of white cells. From this point it takes 7 days for the laboratory to separate the stem cells and grow them into Dendritic Cells which are tagged with Elaine’s cancer peptides to create the vaccine.
Day three has Elaine receiving a one hour infusion of a new drug called Nivolumap. This ground breaking drug has only been available for a couple of months and is able to break down the cancer cells ability to hide from the immune system.
Day four has Elaine receiving an infusion of NDV ( Newcastle Disease Virus ) again fairly ground breaking, this virus kills birds but is harmless to human cells apart from cancer cells which it kills outright. Elaine also receives a drug called “ Zometa “ which helps strengthen bones and make them resistant to cancer.
Day five was the big day. Elaine was injected with her personalised vaccine of Dendritic cells.
She was given approximately 40 million cells which are currently charging around her blood and lymphatic streams.These dendritic cells point her immune system at the cancer cells which have had there “ cloak of invisibility “ defence destroyed by the Nivolumap drug.
Overall Elaine is enjoying very good health. The day after leukapheresis she was very tired as her system rushed to rebuild her white blood cell count. Also after the day five injection with the vaccine she was very tired again as the battle between immune system and cancer cells raged inside her.
Fortunately she exhibited none of side effects that were known possibilities.
We have flights booked for Elaine’s scheduled second round of infusions on January 4th ~ 6th and are currently planning the third round for February and fourth round in March.
Again, we thank you all for your generosity that has helped make all this possible.
Love,Elaine & Chris
Thanks everyone from Rita and Shaun for all your help with Elaine recovery.