Posted by Admin
Post Date : Friday June 29 2007

JS was diagnosed with glioblastoma stage 4 in December 2003 at the age of 48. He was told it was very aggressive and it doubles every 7-14 days. In the same month he had surgery where all visible brain tumor was removed. He also went through 33 rounds of intensity modulated radiation therapy and rotating gamma. He completed his treatments by February 2004. He refused any chemotherapy and Temador and was told by his oncologist that the Christmas he celebrated in December would be his last. However he did take Dilantin since he had previous seizures and to prevent the another one from occurring. Even with follow up chemotherapy and Temador he was told that it was unlikely he would survive more than one year. He started taking Poly-MVA in January 2004 and quickly went up to 8 tsp/day. In Sept 2004 his PET scan was completely clear with no positive uptake findings. In October 2004 he had a gran mal seizure, and his surgeon told him that the glioblastoma was back. However, his oncologist suggested that it may be radiation damage. His surgeon disagreed with the oncologist and said, “the likelihood of radiation damage (rather than a return of the cancer) was equal to the Cubs winning the World Series 3 times in a row.” His seizure medication was changed to Trileptal and Keppra due to a rash from the Dilantin. Whatever it was, it was causing more intense and frequent grand mal seizures, slurring of speech and motor skills. Exploratory surgery was performed on October 2004. The pathology report revealed that 98% of the tissue was necrotic (due to radiation damage) and 2% of the tissue was “unknown.” There was no evidence of any cancer. Because the surgeon still could not believe the results, 3 more pathology reports were sent out. All of them came back negative for cancer. He received no further conventional treatment and stayed on the seizure medication. Decadron was added to reduce pre and post surgery brain swelling. His oncologist orders an MRI every two months to monitor his progress. Each one has been clear of cancer. A suspicious area that was in an MRI in September 2006 was actually due to healing. A later MRI performed in April 2007 revealed that the radiation damage is shrinking. Both his oncologist and surgeon told him that they rarely ever see a patient live this long and do this well, even if they took the chemotherapy and Temador. JS remains in remission. His quality of life is up to 90%. He is very physically active and runs a full time business. He has some residual short term memory loss which seems to occur when he is under stress. He also experiences periods of fatigue. Both of these issues are improving over time. He remains on a maintenance dose of 2 tsp of Poly-MVA per day. He has been on this maintenance dose since September 2006. He will increase the dose immediately if at any point in time his MRI reveals any possible cancer activity.

UPDATE 9/26/07 MRI completed on 08/27/07. Continuous diminished size of the cavitary lesion and a tiny enhanced nodule n the right frontoparietal lobe since the previous study. The findings have improved when compared with the previous study on 6/25/07. The findings are consistent with surgical scarring with necrosis. Disappearance of one of the tiny nodules when compared with the previous study. Oncologist told patient he continues to heal and is doing excellent.

Case study written by Dr. Shari Lieberman as a part of the Poly-MVA Best Case Series.