Being Katharine Hepburn

April 29th, 2010
by kpickett

One of the drugs I’m on for immunosuppression makes me shake constantly.  It’s getting annoying. This side effect, coupled with the neuropathy in my hands, makes simple tasks, like lifting a fork, difficult.  I wonder if this is a glimpse into how people with Parkinson’s feel?  Probably nowhere nearly as bad, but it bites nonetheless.

The drug, tacrolimus, is not used widely for stem cell transplants, but is used generally for kidney transplants.  It’s strange that I’m struggling to rebuild my immune system, and I’m taking drugs to slow that process way down.  But this is part of the dance—coaxing the new cells to slowly, ever so slowly open their eyes, and think that what they see is self.  If they wake up too quickly, they’ll see clearly and attack.

A related immunosuppressive drug that I’m taking, sirolimus, is used probably by even fewer stem cell transplant centers, but the data on this drug are impressive.  As an inhibitor of the mammalian Target Of Rapamycin (mTOR; indeed, sirolimus is rapamycin), it blocks a complex cascade by which cells proliferate, and so all is slowed down.  The new cells are very sleepy.

I’m very lucky to have these drugs.  My current physician is rare in that he does clinical research, and he is actually good at it (this is rare among physicians).  These immunosuppressive drugs, coupled with other novel treatments, are the reason my hospital’s success with stem cell transplants is so much higher than the national average.  Every day I am grateful that I have the care I have (and my praising physicians is as rare as their conducting good research, so that should tell you how confident I am in my physician).

It is worth noting that both of these chemicals are natural derivatives of bacteria:  tacrolimus comes from one species of Streptomyces, sirolimus from another species of the same genus.  In fact, most of the chemotherapies I’ve had are naturally occurring biological products.  Vincristine—one of the first chemotherapies I ever took, and a potent inhibitor of cell division—comes from the Madagascar periwinkle, once placed in the genus Vinca, where the drug gets its name.  Adriamycin, a chemotherapy that damages DNA directly, is also derived from bacteria. And an experimental drug currently showing great promise, Gossypol, is an unaltered, direct extract of the cotton plant, found in the stems, roots and seeds.  This drug directly blocks bcl-2, the epicenter of my cancer’s existence, but more on that later.

I could go on and on.  Hundreds of our pharmaceuticals come directly from natural sources.   The only difference between so-called “natural” medicine and “western” medicine, again, is that the latter is subjected to careful testing, and the former is not.

I can’t believe I could type all that with this much shaking.

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Posted in advocacy, biology, illness journaling | Comments (2)

2 Responses to “Being Katharine Hepburn”

  1. Johanna says:

    So glad you found the treatment team you did! It’s always good to have respect for your physicians! (And as a biologist, no less!)
    When people bemoan the fact that tey have to put those CHEMICALS in their bodies instead of NATURAL medicine, I always wonder if they think the chemicals came from Mars. Even that wouldn’t make them UNnatural, would it?
    My friend whose daughter is undergoing leaukemia treatment wishes the cancer could be conquered by homeopathic remedies. My response: We didn’t conquer Hitler with rose hips!

  2. kpickett says:

    True dat . . . true.

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