A Study in Hope

Last week, a friend of ours pointed our attention to a cancer pain study at NIH which is specific to pain from the waist down: http://cancerpainstudynih.com/index.html
I contacted both my pain management specialist and my oncologist about it and they were both supportive of the idea of my joining that study.

It also happens that a childhood friend of my wife's works with the people who do those studies down at NIH. They talked last week and she talked it up with her colleagues who seem to be eager to get me into the program. My wife later spoke with someone who works with the program who took all of my information and started the process of getting me signed up.

They called back yesterday to follow up and request some additional information from us. They have been in contact with my doctors getting what information that they can from them and apparently my oncologist has been most helpful in giving them whatever they need. I suspect that at some point, I'm going to get a mountain of HPPA release forms to sign. Anyway, they are hoping to get me out for a consultation sometime in the next couple of weeks. I may not get into the specific study that I mentioned above. As I understand it, they will interview and evaluate me and then determine which of the several studies that they have going on is the best fit for me. It sounds like they are pretty interested in getting me on board, probably because I'm a bit of an anomaly having this at my age, with my overall health, and having not seen any of the standard symptoms leading up to it. They seemed most interested in how I came to find out about the cancer and were asking about the chiropractic care that led me to it.

I should probably be a little more guarded about all of this, after all these studies come with no guarantee and there's always the possibility of unintended side effects, potentially severe ones even, but I can't help but be excited at the possibility. Maybe it's because I was told that there is no cure for my condition, maybe it's the hope that I can get rid of this pain permanently, maybe it's the geek in my being excited about being part of the latest and greatest "pre-release" treatment, or the hope that this can perhaps accelerate things a little, maybe it's a little of all of it. Whatever it is, I'm excited about it and hopeful of the potential. I can't wait to get the ball rolling.