Helsinki

Today Marjo and I travelled to Helsinki to meet up with a doctor at Docrates, a private clinic specialising in cancer treatments. We took the train as neither one of us was very eager to drive and the temperature this morning was -20 degrees (Celsius). It was nice and relaxing and a good choice.

In Docrates we met Akseli Hemminki who's in charge of the experimental virus treatments at the clinic and also a professor at the Helsinki University. He had gone through my papers beforehand and seemed well up to speed on the situation with my cancer. He said it's logical to believe that the cancer is causing the back/hip pains I'm struggling with. I'm now taking stronger pain killers but it seems I either need to take more or get even stronger medicine as it's still difficult to fall asleep at nights.

He made a lot of detailed questions to understand what shape I am in physically. The cancer has an impact now and I am clearly in a worse shape than during summer. For example, I get quite tired even after a short 2 km walk around the woods here. He also wanted to know how much I need to sleep during the day time. That varies a little depending on how well I sleep during the night but typically I take a one-hour-long nap in the afternoon.

Then he introduced the virus treatments and emphasized they are experimental at the moment. At some point they will run clinical trials but they have not yet got to that point. As of August 206 patients have received the virus treatment and 50%-63% have had a positive response ("antitumor" as they put it) in one way or another. Not cured, but the cancer has stopped advancing for a while. We also discussed the risks and side-effects of which the most common are flu-like symptoms and fever that can last for days, as well as swelling in the tumours which may actually increase my back pain. He also pointed out that they may not have discovered all side-effects as they are in an experimental mode. They use various viruses but would choose one that they believe is most suited for my type of cancer. He also recommended to take a set of three treatments as this has shown best results.

There were three criteria I need to fulfil in order to be eligible for virus treatment. First of all, I have had to go through all standard chemo treatments (Eloxatin/Avastin, Camptosar/Erbitux and Xeloda in one or both of these combinations). I'm fine on this criteria. Then blood values and physical shape need to be quite good. They pay special attention to the liver values and he was a little concerned that my ALAT value had gone up to 72 which is slightly above the normal range. He said they would do a final check of the blood values on the treatment day.

He concluded the assessment saying I'm at the moment good for virus treatment but that we shouldn't spend too long time making a decision as the cancer seems to be progressing fast. I said let's go for it and Marjo agreed. He booked me in for Tuesday next week, then we went through the procedure and I signed the papers.