Of Feminists and Calculators

There are 40 or 50 of us, gathered in the back room of the club house of our local golf club. We are here to listen to Dr. Kevin Wilcox (wish I could use his real name). Wilcox is a Canadian trained physician (McGill, we are told repeatedly, the most prestigious medical school in Canada) and practices alternative cancer treatments in the Bahamas. Supposedly the audience is made up of medical people but I don’t recognize anyone.

 

Wilcox runs through the usual supplements and diets. Vit D, Vit C, turmeric, selenium, mushrooms, oxidants, anti-oxidants (I can never remember), all the usual stuff. The audience nods happily at each claim Wilcox makes. In front of me sit two middle-aged women, with sensible skirts and identical pixie bob haircuts, the uniform of middle aged feminism. Wilcox now goes into the meat of his presentation, describing the treatments he offers at his clinic. And there are several…… he grows his patient’s cancer cells in his lab he declares, and tests to see which chemotherapeutics are effective (never mind they tried this 30 years ago – it didn’t work). Wilcox has an irritating habit of tapping the side of his head and saying “we’re using our brains” when he describes his treatments. As if no one else is. “We take serum from a patient who is cured” claims Wilcox, “and inject it into our cancer patient”, tapping his head again. Brilliant of course, an anti cancer serum. I kick myself. Why did I not think of that I wonder, I should be living in a beach house in the Bahamas. This so called anti cancer serum notion incidentally has been around for 30 years or so. It has been extensively researched, no one has ever identified what constitutes this “serum” and no one has ever shown it works. Never mind, it sounds plausible enough I suppose. One of the pixie feminists turns to her companion and says “it’s so simple isn’t it?”. Her friend nods enthusiastically. 

 

I am enraged at all of this, the mendaciousness, the cynical opportunism, the gullibility of people, the exploitation of people’s fear. Wilcox is not a serious man I conclude. I cannot decide if he believes all this or if he is aware deep down that he is a fraud, a charlatan, a quack. For all the head tapping he is not “using his brain” as he claims, at best he has a hunch (and many of them, a new one every three months or so it seems). He peddles hope, not science. At no time does he present us with any outcomes of his treatments. I’m not expecting miracles, but you would think that he would give us some idea of the number of patients he has treated, their characteristics and  outcomes. But nothing, just more and more claims and tapping his head. And his audience cannot get enough, they lap it all up. In the front row sits a young woman with huge shoulder pads. She goes on and on about life style, poor eating habits and so on. God protect us from these self appointed saints who will blame the patient for their disease. Tell it to a thirty year old mother with stage 4 colon cancer I feel like shouting.  I cannot take this anymore and halfway through the question period I leave. This is not for me.

 

There is another reason why I dislike all this alternative treatment talk, a historical and philosophical one. Many of these treatments find their origin in the German speaking areas of Europe in the 19th century. This was the time of the German romantic movement, a reaction against the anglo saxon philosophy of enlightenment and scientific enquiry. The German romantics rebelled against what they regarded as a mechanistic and reductionist view of mankind and disease. Instead they wanted to focus on the whole person, in harmony with nature and taking sustenance and cure from his natural environment. All very well, except that some hundred years later this philosophy morphed into a “Blut und Boden” idea, which, combined with a vicious racism and a malignant form of social Darwinism ended in, well, we know how it all ended. ZyklonB may yet be the only effective “alternative” treatment. I wonder if the pixie feminists and the shoulder pad lady know where all this comes from.

 

But there is one treatment I am interested in, the treatment that Trischa, my pharmaceutical rep friend introduced me to. I have to be circumspect about this. This is a treatment which, though over a hundred years old and perfectly safe, is not approved. Not in Canada, not in the US, not in Europe, Australia or New Zealand. The only places where this treatment can legally be given are the Bahamas (Wilcox again), Mexico and I believe Peru. I am told that if the “authorities” were ever to discover that I am doing this in Canada I would be open to prosecution and even incarceration. So I have to be secretive about the whole thing. I have to do this alone, without medical or nursing assistance. I cannot tell anyone. And if anyone does ask ….. I am doing this in the Bahamas, in a very real sense. And I will refer to this treatment not by its real name but will simply call it “IT”, as in “Immune Treatment”…..

 

In a way the massive recurrence on my June scan was a good thing. There was no arguing with these findings, no way of fooling myself, this was a lethal, incurable recurrence. Had it been a single, isolated area of cancer, I would almost certainly have chosen further chemotherapy. But my circumstances are stark and unforgiving. Chemotherapy cannot, will not cure this, my oncologist has nothing to offer except more misery and then death. Nothing good lies ahead of me.  And so my quest begins. I begin to do some serious research on this treatment. And the more I learn, the more I persuade myself there is real merit in this treatment. And there is now a perfectly plausible scientific explanation for its effectiveness. IT involves the intravenous administration with a concoction of killed bacteria. This will cause a stimulation of the immune system and a high fever. The fever causes the traumatic death of a number of cancer cells, releasing their antigens into the circulation and the innate immune system, stimulated by the dead bacterial toxins, attacks the cancer cells. It all ties in very nicely with recent advances in immunology, a better understanding of the role of dendritic cells and killer T’s. All very interesting, encouraging even. As I explore this further it becomes clear that the historical data on this treatment, though mixed, are on the whole encouraging. It has been tried in a variety of cancers, and is associated with a 90% improvement in symptoms, and a cure rate of up to 50%. And this in patients who are usually end stage, with advanced, terminal disease and no further options, their health compromised by cancer and multiple courses of chemotherapy. These  results are better than anything modern chemotherapy offers. There is not however much experience with IT and colon cancer. 

 

Somehow I need to find a way to access this treatment in Canada. I have no intention of doing this in the Bahamas, under the so called care of Wilcox, subsidizing his life style. I contact my friend Terry, whose lymphoma was cured with this treatment. He puts me in touch with a physician who treated her bone marrow cancer with IT. She is cagey, won’t tell me where she gets her bacterial solution, but gives me the website of the company that makes it. I contact the company, and, as expected, they respond by telling me that they cannot help me as the treatment is illegal in Canada. They refer me to (surprise!) Wilcox, who seems to have rather cornered the market. I am not deterred, I write back, pressing my case, emphasizing that I am a physician myself, and ( cleverly I think) that I admire the company’s philosophy but that having met and corresponded with Wilcox I am not sure he is the right man for this. My flattery pays off. The company CEO calls me and promises to refer me to his scientific advisor. Steve, as I shall call him, calls me within the hour. He is a professor of medical physiology, somewhere in North America and after some discussion he gives his approval to my getting the treatment. I am in business! I contact Walt, as I will call him, the CEO of the company. I have to go and collect the medication myself, he won’t send it by mail. No matter, it is a 10 hour journey, and I will happily make it.

 

I am filled with excitement and optimism. For the first time since all this started I feel I am control, no longer helpless. I am confronting my cancer, I will deal with it on my terms, I am in charge. A few days later I travel to Walt’s lab. It is located in the industrial area of a medium sized city. Some 1500 – 2000 square feet, half of it taken up by a reception area and conference room, the other half a laboratory. Walt looks to be in his late fifties or early sixties. A busy, energetic man, a no nonsense manner and a quick intelligence. I like him, and would have liked to spend more time with him. His background he tells me is in laboratory design (he was involved in the human genome project). Some years ago he became CEO of a company interested in developing vaccines against cancer, a company in which several nobel laureates participated. Walt became disappointed at the lack of progress and came across the IT treatment. And here is where it becomes interesting, and which tells you something about the man. Not willing to rely on second or third hand accounts, he went to New York, where the treatment originated in the late 1900’s and searched out everything the originator had written. From this he concluded that the secret lay in the preparation of the solution, preparing and killing the bacteria in such a way as to maintain their antigenic properties (you have to kill them at a low heat apparently, so as not to destroy the proteins). And after having done this he wrote a book about it (available at Amazon.com, #5,413,336 on their best seller list, buy it, it makes a great gift), started his company, set up a scientific advisory board and built his laboratory. 

 

Walt gives me a brief tour of his lab. It is clean, well organized and quite simple really. It does not seem to take much to grow bacteria and kill them in a low temperature water bath. Walt gives me a copy of his book and a year’s supply of the compound. I ask him how much I owe him and he tells me he is giving it to me for free. I ask him what his business model is. Walt smiles at this. He tells me he is trying to get as many patients as possible and compile a data base of the outcomes. None of his patients has died in 18 months he tells me. This is extraordinary if true (and I believe him), given that all of these patients have incurable, often end stage disease, all other options having been exhausted. The purpose of all this is to amass enough credible evidence to get approval for a properly designed trial to demonstrate the effectiveness of this treatment. So far, in a variety of jurisdictions, including USA, Canada and Denmark  permission has been denied, despite considerable support from oncologists in those countries. The latest reason for refusal is that Walt’s lab does not comply with international standards. The company is now trying to find investors to obtain the necessary $3 million to build a new lab and perform a modern and properly designed trial of this treatment. Once the effectiveness of this treatment is established he will sell the company and, for all I know, become Wilcox’s neighbour in the Bahamas. That’s the business model. It all seems many years away.

 

But I am happy and excited. Clutching my little box of IT compound I make my way home. I can barely wait to get started with my treatment. It is a month since my June scan and I am worried my cancer is growing out of control. So the next day I start. I know the protocol by heart. Take a .5 ml syringe, draw up .1 ml of the compound, dilute to .5 ml, discard .4 ml, dilute again to .5 ml and so on until the desired concentration is reached. The dosage is to be increased until the desired response is obtained. There is one slight problem. My secretary has ordered .3 ml syringes, so I have to convert the amounts. I can do this of course, because I am after all university educated. The protocol calls for preheating your body prior to administration, so as to reduce the rigours and shaking that will occur. These rigours will start some 45 minutes after the injection, will last 20 -30 minutes and afterwards a fever will occur. A good response is anything over 39C, and this will last for two hours or so. And then, I optimistically expect, everything will quickly go back to normal.

 

And so I prepare my solution, checking and double checking the amount. I have heard that at the low starting dose nothing much usually happens, so I don’t bother with the preheating and all that. In any case it is a warm early evening in July, I tell myself. I decide to use my port, a device implanted in my chest wall with a catheter that feeds into my central vein, close to my heart. Usually a specially trained nurse will do this injection, using a special type of needle. I don’t have a nurse, and I don’t have the needle, so I am using an ordinary syringe and needle. I stand in front of a mirror, disinfect the area and plunge the needle into my chest. This, I can tell you is quite painful, and is by no means an easy thing to do (think Pulp Fiction). I have to take a deep breath and grit my teeth to do this. My first attempt fails, obviously I am not in the right place. I try again, using a longer, bigger needle. This time I am successful, the syringe empties easily without resistance. I slowly inject the full contents into my central venous system. Mission accomplished, I go sit on my porch and enjoy the warm evening sun wearing just a pair of shorts. After about 15 minutes I notice a slight trembling in my lips. This is encouraging, I think, obviously there is a response. Minutes later I begin to shake uncontrollably. My teeth are clattering so much it hurts. My arms and legs are shaking as if I am having a seizure. I panic and run into my trailer. I realize I need to heat myself as quickly as I can. But I haven’t fed the dogs yet. So, shaking and teeth clattering I try to fill their bowls, dog food flying all over the place. And then I run to my bed, switch on the electric blanket, put on fleece pants, several fleece pullovers and dive under the covers. The shaking and rigours continue. I curl up in a fetal position and try to ride it out. I may be an atheist, but oh my sweet Jesus, I have never experienced anything like it.

 

After 20 minutes the shaking stops. Just like that. I lie very still, my head is pounding, I am hyperventilating, my heart is thumping. Slowly my fever develops. It will eventually rise to 39.9C. During this time I become nauseated and vomit numerous times. I drag myself out of bed to grab a bowl.  I develop uncontrollable diarrhea. Although my toilet is only a few feet away I do not make it. I shit all over my pants and all over the floor. I sit slumped on my toilet, unable to move. Finally I have enough energy to clean myself as best as I can and roll back into bed. This happens several more times. I have never felt so ill in my life. Not after my surgery, not during chemo, never. After a few hours my fever subsides, the nausea settles and my headache improves. I am dying of thirst and drink a family sized container of orange juice. I am so weak I can barely stand, my legs are buckling, the slightest activity leaves me winded. I check my blood pressure, it has dropped to 80/50. Had something like this happened to a patient of mine she would probably have ended up in ICU. As it is I lie on my couch, unable to move, unable to sleep. After four hours I crawl to my bed and drift off. The next day I am weak, can barely stand, my legs are like jelly. I spend the day on my couch. On the third day I begin to feel a little better, I am able to walk my dogs very slowly. Over all it takes me five days to recover enough to do my daily activities. And I am supposed to do this five times a week……

 

A few weeks later, as I go over my treatment record, I realize that (a faulty calculator no doubt) unintentionally I gave myself ten times the usual starting dose…..