Showing posts with label malignant glioma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label malignant glioma. Show all posts

PostHeaderIcon Sen. Edward Kennedy, 77 dies of brain cancer

8/26/2009 | Posted by mesiamd | Edit Post


Edward (Ted) Kennedy, the 77-year old brother of Pres. John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Sen. Robert Kennedy died after a fight against brain cancer in Massachusetts. The controversial patriarch of the Kennedy clan whose career in the senate spanned almost half a century was a liberal democrat with a strong voice on issues of healthcare, education, immigration, and better wages.

The senator who reached out to colleagues of all political persuasions championed civil rights, defended the poor, worked to end the Vietnam war, and advocated against nuclear proliferation. From all over the world, his death elicited a flurry of recollections and praises for a towering political figure with indelible contribution to public service.

The 9th and youngest child of an influential political family of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, Edward became a senator in the early ‘60s raising hopes that he would one day become president. The legendary saga of his family and career however had been marked by a series of tragedy and personal triumph.

His brothers John Jr. and Robert died on the hands of assassins cutting short their political careers. His bid for the White House was thwarted by Jimmy Carter who won the presidential nomination in 1980. His ambition to hold the highest office of the land was ruined by the Chappaquiddick incident when the car he drove plunged into the river killing a young woman named Mary Jo Kopechne.

Having served briefly in the Army, Edward went to Harvard without finishing his education but graduated in the University of Virginia Law School. He was married to Joan Bennett Kennedy in 1958, but got divorced in 1982.

The white haired, barrel-chested senator with a booming voice remarried a young Washington lawyer named Victoria Reggie. His children included daughter, Kara Kennedy Allen, sons, Edward Jr. and Patrick, the congressman from Rhode Island, and stepchildren, Caroline and Curran Raclin.

Vigorously treated by the best doctors under the current healthcare he wanted to reform, he succumbed to a vicious form of cerebral tumor called malignant glioma. An ardet supporter of Pres. Barack Obama whom he endorsed in the presidential race, he asked his niece Caroline Kennedy to seek the New York senatorial position vacated by Hillary Clinton, but failed.

Proximate to his death, Ted asked his colleagues to revert the choice of a senate replacement for him from election to a gubernatorial selection---- so that the transition of office at the time of his death could be easy. Because of his deteriorated health, the accomplished lawmaker wasn’t able attend the funeral of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, his elderly sister who died early this month. (Photo Credit: AP/ Cook)=0=

RELATED BLOG: Sen. Edward Kennedy survives longer under the world’s best medicine available Posted by mesiamd at 7/07/2009; Posthumous tributes to Sen. Edward Kennedy pours in from the world Posted by mesiamd at 8/27/2009; Sen. Edward Kennedy interred in Arlington Cemetery Posted by mesiamd at 8/30/2009



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PostHeaderIcon Sen. Edward Kennedy survives longer under the world’s best medicine available

7/07/2009 | Posted by mesiamd | Edit Post


Edward Klein’s book entitled “Ted Kennedy: The dream that never died” details how the senator has weathered a deadly brain tumor (malignant glioma)--- longer than the usual expectancy. Without the current system, there is almost no way one can have this brand of excellent US medicine working in his favor. This makes us think twice on what Washington wants to do with our health.

Americans are endangered of losing healthcare today if the Obama government dismantles the current system. In the rush to implement a universal healthcare plan that is cheap and affordable, freedom of choice to get the best doctor and avail of quality treatment may altogether be lost. Here below is a glimpse of an astounding healthcare that helps Kennedy survive and the Obama government wants to change.

“The meeting on (Friday) May 30 was extraordinary in at least two ways,” wrote Lawrence K Altman, M.D., the chief medical correspondent at the New York Times. “one was the ability of a powerful patient ---in this case, a scion of a legendary political family and the chairman of the Senate’s health committee---to summon noted consultants to learn about the latest therapy and research findings.

“The second was his efficiency in quickly convening more than a dozen experts from at least six academic centers. Some flew in Boston. Others participated by telephone after receiving pertinent tests result and other medical records.”

At the May 30 meeting, opinions were divided over the benefit of surgery. According to Dr. Altman, “Some neurosurgeons strongly favored it; two did not.” Among those opposing surgery was Dr. Raymond Sawaya, chairman of neurosurgery at Baylor College of medicine and the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Dr. Sawaya believed that the cancer had spread over a large area and, therefore, that most of it could not be eradicated.

“Tumors in the brain in the brain are like real estate,” said Reid Thompson, director of neurosurgical oncology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. “It’s all location, location, location.”

“No matter what treatment you use,” said Dr. Henry Brem of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, “It tends to be an aggressive, quickly replicating, quickly growing tumor.”

Nonetheless, Dr. Vivek Deshmukh, director of cerebrovascular and endovascular neurosurgery at George Washington University Medical center, urged the senator to take his chances with the scalpel. “The treatment that has been shown to make the most difference as far as survival is removal of the tumor,” Dr. Deshmukh said, “Surgical removal carries the greatest benefit in terms of extending his survival.”

And also, on Friday afternoon, the senator put in a call to Dr. Allan Friedman, co-director of the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke University Medical Center. The 59 year-old doctor was considered by many as his colleagues to be the Mozart of brain surgeons. He was preparing to to take off for a long-planned vacation in Canada when his cell phone rang. On the other end of the line was Sen. Edward Kennedy, who told the doctor that he had searched the world for the best neurosurgeon to remove his cancerous brain tumor.

“And I want you.” ----Klein, Edward. Ted Kennedy: The dream that never died. Crown Publishing Group. 2009, pp. 209-210.

No matter what these politicians tell the people about healthcare, when one is stricken ill, especially by a life-threatening disease, gut instinct tells of the need for the best treatment. It happened to Kennedy, a "royal" Massachusetts democrat and seasoned politican in Capitol Hill. He is a proponent of a government-controlled universal healthcare system that will likely bring cuts to available life-saving treatments that has extended his life. In trying to rein over expenses, the new healthcare plan will likely detach the very sick, the elderly, disabled, and those with incurable diseases from care that has made their survival possible.

Yet, Kennedy like other politicans don’t worry so much about undoing what is supposed to be the best medicine available on earth today. Part of the social experiment America is embarking, the Obama government wants to put in place an alternative socialized and rationed healthcare for Americans akin to those in Canada and Europe---extending medical coverage to as much people but endangering the quality of care and advance of US medical science. They know whatever medical care is made available in this country, the influential, educated, and well-connected will have the power to get excellent medical care which may be distant from the reach of ordinary Americans. (Photo Credit: learfieldnews) =0=

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PostHeaderIcon Sen. Edward Kennedy Has Brain Cancer and 46 Million Americans Don't Have Health Insurance

5/23/2008 | Posted by mesiamd | Edit Post
Dr. Augusto Mesia, a Filipino-American pathologist in Astoria New York shares his thoughts on Sen. Edward Kennedy who has malignant glioma, a brain tumor that is "treatable but not curable." A Kennedy will certainly get the best treatment regimen in the world. A single tumor-contracting drug that costs $100,000 a year is a drop in the bucket, but heartbreak stuff for the 46 million Americans who do not have health insurance and for the people in countries less prosperous than America. Dr. Mesia himself battles a tough, lingering Auto-Immune Hemolytic Anemia.

When Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia of cerebral hemorrhage in 1945, many Americans were caught by surprise. In those days people usually didn’t pry on the lives of public figures as they do now. The large majority of Americans didn’t know that in the White House, the US president had been sick for a while, an aftermath of years of vigorous work and smoking while he suffered from leg paralysis, thought to be the effect of poliomyelitis.

Time has changed since the death of FDR. Today, the world seems to insist in knowing what goes on in the lives of famous personalities. And people are more willing than ever before, to share important bad news. This new wave of frankness somehow liberates the burdened soul when someone gets sick.

Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti contracted pancreatic cancer and the public knew of its grim implications months before he died. Actor Patrick Swayze had love, support and prayers when he announced having the same disease. Prior to chemotherapy, Pres. Cory Aquino received a deluge of “get well” wishes when she was reported to have colonic cancer. Sen. Edward (Ted) Kennedy had Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) doctors saying that he has a malignant brain tumor growing in his left parietal lobe, the part of the cerebral hemisphere that controls complex functions like movement and language.

Such hideous reports of ill health have been generally met with sadness and concern by the public. Theories abound. Conjectures on the clinical course, lethality, and dreaded complications of disease diffuse into the public psyche like prismatic light rays in a clairvoyant’s eye.

In Kennedy’s case, there are remarkable expressions of concern. Setting aside differences, his friends, political adversaries and even people unknown to him, are like a “family” in their wish for his full recovery. The Kennedy clan, not stranger to tragedies which repeatedly rocked the family, is fully supportive as the senator girds for his personal battle with cancer.

Many recognize Kennedy’s significant contributions to public service. For almost five decades, as a secular libertarian, the senator advocates for controversial pro-choice in abortion and roots for same sex marriage. He displays a patriarchal leadership among Democrats after his brothers Pres. John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the feuding candidates in his party for this fall’s presidential election are united in their support for the ailing senator. Sending his get well wish, President George W. Bush said,

"Laura and I are concerned to learn of our friend Senator Kennedy's diagnosis. Ted Kennedy is a man of tremendous courage, remarkable strength and powerful spirit. Our thoughts are with Senator Kennedy and his family during this difficult period. We join our fellow Americans in praying for his full recovery." (AP, 05/21/08, Johnson,G.)

Sifting through more lab tests done on Kennedy, the Boston doctors mull on the right approach to proceed with treatment. In spite of the medical sophistication at their disposal, the doctors admit that the brain tumor (labeled by pathologists as malignant glioma,) is formidable, even for someone so influential like the senator. There’s no doubt however that he’ll get the best medical care the world can offer and the success in fighting the disease will depend on some factors that aren’t in the usual sphere of the doctors’ control---- tumor type, size, pathologic grade, location, patient age, and response to treatment.

Commenting on Kennedy’s condition, Dr. Suriya Jeyapalan, a neuro-oncologist of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Massachusetts remarked,

"It's treatable but not curable. You can put it into remission for a while but it's not a curable tumor." (AP 05/21.08, Johnson,G.)

Dr. Jeyapalan has a point. In recent years, doctors have gained expansive knowledge to extend life and improve survival among those who suffer vicious forms of cancers. As old treatments are refined and drugs rediscovered, there’s increasing precision in surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy (whichever treatment combination applies.)

Veering away from the old “hit or miss” cancer therapies, there are smart target drugs which interfere on genes to frustrate the rapid divisions of malignant cells. There are designer medicines to suppress blood vessel proliferations which sustain tumor growth or cause the spontaneous death of wayward abnormal cells.

Yet, cancer regimens aren’t all magic silver bullets. Success isn’t guaranteed and treatments can be quite expensive. For example, Avastin, an anticancer medicine which blocks vascular growth in tumors may have a tag price of nearly $100,000 per year, per patient. Whatever medicines Kennedy will receive in his own treatment, he has the advantage of having the best healthcare on his fingertips---unlike those who can’t afford it.

The number of Americans who doesn’t have good access to healthcare is huge. Forty-six (46) million people in USA do not have any medical insurance coverage. The staggering number is half the entire Filipino population. Considering America has affluence, inventiveness and grit, it boggles the mind why this happens.

The United States hasn’t come up with a solution to stop the steep rise of prescription medicines’ costs. There’s hemorrhaging of the government-sponsored Medicare and Medicaid programs whose budget could run out before the baby boomers die, rendering the system bankrupt. It’s not surprising therefore that illness remains a fearsome foe in the American heartland.

With these, it seems there’s no need to see a poor country outside America to know the increasing healthcare problems the world faces. Even the planet’s wealthiest country has people who’re poor and can’t afford healthcare. These people feel panicky when bad news like Kennedy’s cancer hit the headlines. They’re scared thinking sickness can be their own bedfellow--- a stalking death sentence which threatens, a pathway which gives way to debts, a time which inspires supplications for a miracle.

As worrisome as the lack of healthcare which distresses the United States, the world sends a heartfelt get-well wish for Sen. Edward Kennedy. At the hospital in Boston, workers and family members applaud for his complete recovery and survival. Even the family dogs Sunny and Splash meet him wagging their tails to send in the same message of hope. ==0==
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