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July 8, 2005

Laura Ingraham - Chemotherapy: Dose-Dense

by Ferdinand T Cat

Laura went in for her second chemotherapy treatment yesterday afternoon. She reports that it went well, but that she felt more queasiness this time.

It has been two weeks since her last treatment, which means she's using dose-dense chemotherapy. The effects of chemotherapy hit their peak after two weeks, and it takes another week for the body to bounce back. For this reason, the standard of care for chemotherapy is normally three weeks between doses. Studies conducted in the early Eighties showed that hitting the tumor cells every two weeks would kill more of them; however, this has a heavier impact on the patient's white cell count, increasing the risk of a possibly-fatal infection.

In 1991, Amgen and Roche developed Neupogen, which stimulates the immune system. Studies conducted in 2002 showed that chemotherapy every two weeks, when supplemented by Neupogen, increased breast cancer remission from 75% to 82% without decreasing the overall survival rate of 90%.

Laura has two more treatments after this one, after which she is planning a vacation in Alaska.

As always, keep her in your prayers. An 82% disease-free survival rate is a huge improvement over the way things have been in the past, but when it's someone I care about, anything less than 100% makes me worry.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat


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I came to this website looking for information on Laura's wedding, or even where Jimmy as been. Is he not behind her during her hour of need.


Posted by: Shelly at July 12, 2005 8:38 AM

They broke up in May. I covered it in this article: http://www.conservativecat.com/mt/archives/2005/07/the_wedding_thi.html


Posted by: Ferdy [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 12, 2005 1:19 PM

HTML is not allowed in comments; however, if you put in a raw URL (http://www.somewhere.com/page.html) it will automatically be converted to a link.. Also, it is likely your comment will not appear unless you refresh the page manually after posting it.

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