#tumor cw

[stellarbay]

i want a benign tumor to be named after me. false alarm, enough to shock you into action. i want this to rip you into the shreds you'll make of this when you read it. i want you to curse me and loathe me and dream about me coming back and saying you were right, you were always right- but you weren't. and i'm not a tumor. and you're probably talking to someone else and telling her you never thought you'd love again. that's okay. i can be the scar that proves you made it or the open wound that never heals. as long as i'm there. i don't miss you, i just don't want my time wasted. and what's life without a little violence? i can be cold to a ghost, but i can't pull your hair and knock your precious teeth out. grant me some fantasies, grant me a sleepless night or two where i'm drowning in my own mistakes but you wake up to find me thriving. i thought about leaving you messages, but i can't remember our jokes. that's what happens when you set your home on fire. i don't regret much, except that. if i get a tumor, i'll name it after you.

[vellichorom]

you sick little animal, even death itself pities you.

[reasonsforhope]

"In a first-ever human clinical trial, an mRNA cancer vaccine developed at the University of Florida successfully reprogrammed patients’ immune systems to fiercely attack glioblastoma, the most aggressive and lethal brain tumor.

The results in four adult patients mirrored those in 10 pet dog patients suffering from brain tumors whose owners approved of their participation.

The discovery represents a potential new way to recruit the immune system to fight treatment-resistant cancers using an iteration of mRNA technology and lipid nanoparticles, similar to COVID-19 vaccines, but with two key differences: use of a patient’s own tumor cells to create a personalized vaccine, and a newly engineered complex delivery mechanism within the vaccine.

“Instead of us injecting single particles, we’re injecting clusters of particles that are wrapping around each other like onions,” said senior author Elias Sayour, M.D., Ph.D., a UF Health pediatric oncologist who pioneered the new vaccine, which like other immunotherapies attempts to “educate” the immune system that a tumor is foreign.

“These clusters alert the immune system in a much more profound way than single particles would.”

Among the most impressive findings was how quickly the new method spurred a vigorous immune-system response to reject the tumor, said Sayour, principal investigator at the University’s RNA Engineering Laboratory and McKnight Brain Institute investigator who led the multi-institution research team.

“In less than 48 hours, we could see these tumors shifting from what we refer to as ‘cold’—very few immune cells, very silenced immune response—to ‘hot,’ very active immune response,” he said.

“That was very surprising given how quick this happened, and what that told us is we were able to activate the early part of the immune system very rapidly against these cancers, and that’s critical to unlock the later effects of the immune response,” he explained in a video (below).

Glioblastoma is among the most devastating diagnoses, with median survival around 15 months. Current standard of care involves surgery, radiation and some combination of chemotherapy.

The new report, published May 1 in the journal Cell, is the culmination of seven years of promising studies, starting in preclinical mouse models.

In the cohort of four patients, genetic material called RNA was extracted from each patient’s own surgically removed tumor, and then messenger RNA (mRNA)—the blueprint of what is inside every cell, including tumor cells—was amplified and wrapped in the newly designed high-tech packaging of biocompatible lipid nanoparticles, to make tumor cells “look” like a dangerous virus when reinjected into the bloodstream to prompt an immune-system response.

The vaccine was personalized to each patient with a goal of getting the most out of their unique immune system...

While too early in the trial to assess the clinical effects of the vaccine, the patients either lived disease-free longer than expected or survived longer than expected. The 10 pet dogs lived a median of 4.5 months, compared with a median survival of 30-60 days typical for dogs with the condition.

The next step, with support from the Food and Drug Administration and the CureSearch for Children’s Cancer foundation, will be an expanded Phase I clinical trial to include up to 24 adult and pediatric patients to validate the findings. Once an optimal and safe dose is confirmed, an estimated 25 children would participate in Phase 2."

-via Good News Network, May 11, 2024

-video via University of Florida Health, May 1, 2024

[wildfairies]

we have to put my kitty to sleep 💔 I haven’t stopped crying I literally don’t know how to deal with this. it’s scheduled for saturday morning wtf am I supposed to do until then…. I’m so heartbroken she’s only 6

[terrys-min-catl]

Short preface:

I like to learn different sorts of new things about medicine and how interesting diseases or injuries can be. And one day I came across a post about melanin and cancer. Melanoma can appear on skin or on any mucous membrane. Even in eyes. An eye cancer called eye melanoma. A tumor originating in one particular part of the eye, in the absence of any action, completely affects the eyeball, causing it to turn black. And this type of disease reminded me of Kevin!

So I present you my headcanon: Kevin's eye melanoma.

(In addition, if we imagine that in such an extreme stage of infection, Kevin miraculously remains alive (and unknown in any way to science can see). So: he may also has a mild form of exaphthalmia (bug-eyed), lack of peripheral vision and bad vision in general)

Bonus:

Small fast sketch bc why not. (Sorry for my bad handwriting lol)

[captaintiny]

.

[anachrosims]

Medical stuff within. Nothing descriptive at all, just, erring on the side of caution.

Pretty much my entire uterus is tumors. They think they're benign, but to know for sure, a biopsy needs to happen.

I'm tired.

[yammerscupids]

[mozart-the-meerkitten]

Hey guys, if you could pray for me and my parents I'd be really grateful. The last cat in our old brigade, Tansy, is almost 15 and at the end of her days. She tends to get sick from allergies during the spring and she's had a rough winter and she's just, she's not going to make it through this time and she's been SUCH a good cat her whole life that we're not gonna let her suffer through it to the end. We're hoping we can get an appointment to get her put down tomorrow (that sounds awful saying it, but she's miserable and I can't watch her suffer she doesn't deserve that), so we would really appreciate your thoughts and prayers.

[creepyscritches]

My therapist asking me if I had a youtube channel for general cancer info last week honestly got me thinking. Professionally I AM a cancer educator and my audience is other healthcare professionals, but god so daunting to think of presenting to audiences larger than 50 or so at a time :S it has always been a passion to digest high level research and then translate it into understandable language - - I do it a lot for family+friends dealing with ominous or confusing medical news. Idk! He put it really well when he said even my "basic" knowledge can help people better understand some of the most life-altering medical realities affecting them.

[partlyironic]

Hi. So. On one of the first Big Adult Holidays, me and a group of my oldest friends went to a spa for my friends' 20th. Said birthday girl was called Emma and was one of my absolute favourite people. Totally insane, mad as a box of frogs. Well we open the first room – of the SERIOUSLY nice hotel which at that point was the greatest kind of novelty that we all had scraped by to afford – and Emma, delighted, wooped, and from the door ran and *launched* herself to belly flop down on the huge and decadent bed in the room in celebration. Except, she completely overshot the bed somehow, and so the picture was a girl wooping, running and then throwing herself like a drunk Olympist over the bed and completely disappearing from view with a cartoonish thud. It is still, to this day, one of the most hysterical things I have ever seen, and one of the biggest laughing fits I think any of us have ever had, especially Emma. My knees gave out and I had to crawl on all fours to go around the bed to see if she was OK because I couldn't breathe enough to speak. And there we lay for an age trying to stop laughing.

On this day in 2018, a few days before her 25th birthday, Emma passed from a brain tumour. I miss her every day, but this story still is the one anecdote we can tell and always still laugh, without fail, even today.

Miss that stupid sod. We were complete fucking idiots together.

[forgotten-daydreamer]

vent moment but my health is a bit worse than i let on, which is weird ik since it seems like complain about it all the time here, and apparently i also look sick, because two separate people in their 40s or 50s asked me, 24, if i needed their seat on the bus. kind of them. but humiliating nonetheless.

[spookiesmausoleum]

𝐉𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚 𝐐𝐮𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬

Some out-of-context quotes from Jeremy himself, change pronouns as needed!

"You little shit, it's not a tumor, okay? I'm gonna strange your parents!"

"No one should ever put cigarettes out on their penis...for any reason."

“Get!— There’s Blood in the box, there’s blood inside this box.”

"Yeah- I have- I am- I'm... I'm just thinkin of the explosion from, like, three weeks ago"

"Would you smoke a blunt with Peter Griffin?"

"I don't wanna turn on the light and fuck up my cones and rods"

"[Name]... I would rather... I would rather be naked on camera than play League Of Legends with you for an hour."

"Feed him to the lions."

"They saw me. Uh, having sex. Uh, with Death. In my bed"

"In fact, yeah, you're gonna get punished with a Stewie Griffin impression"

"See you motherfuckers are gonna think this is funny."

"Oh ya, ya, ya! No, no, no, no, no, the thing in the fridge is definitely not human meat..."

"I am The Rats... The Rats are NOTHING with out me"

"Everyone's gonna do the "small penis" curse to me."

"He's made out of the goo that I shoot out of my staff."

"But I don't- I don't- I- I- I refuse to believe that this is an un-pog moment right here"

""You cant count worth shit" I can piss my pants though"

"Underwear is stuck to my ass right now... and its gonna take a God- its gonna take a god damn crowbar to get it off"

"I'm not actually saying that I'm going to put somebody in a meat grinder, goddamnit. Whatever."

""You're built like a truck" I know, my ass is huge, I know"

""Would you ever have kids?"... No, I've shit my pants in the last year. I can't handle it. I wouldn't be able to do it."

"I don't- I like, don't know what that is but I kinda do. I don't know what that means. I don't know why I read that."

"I feel- Sometimes I feel like you guy's mother at dinner"

"Please, I'm wicked high, what are you doing?"

"Don't worry, I-I-I'll bring myself down a few PEGS, uh, when I do the catboy stream, right?"

"I'm about to sneeze again... I didn't even sneeze once today... Why did I say "again"?"

"gahd... Fuckin' fire ants everywhere... I'm gonna die from fire ants"

[caterjunes]

i just found a lump right at the base of peach's throat. it was his 2nd birthday like 2 days ago. he's been so so skinny recently and no matter how much we feed him he just won't put on weight and i just found a lump at the base of his throat.

[honeysuckle-venom]

Got my MRI results back, it's not terrible I guess but it's also...not great. I'm pretty unhappy actually. I was really, really hoping for more shrinking. But while the giant one in the left lobe has shrunk a little bit more, the biggest one in the right lobe has grown! It's now 8.4 cm x 6.7 x 7.1 cm, when before it was only 7.6 x 6.1 x 6.4. I'm really devastated that one has grown, I don't exactly know what that means for me but it's not good! And I remembered that I have a LOT of tumors, like, a lot, because when I looked at the scans last year honestly my liver looked like it was more tumor than liver. But I had kind of convinced myself that maybe I was exaggerating that in my head and actually only had like 6 or 8? But the report says "The lesions are too numerous to count [much greater than 10]." So it was how I remembered it, lots and lots of large tumors everywhere. Bc technically anything greater than 5cm is fairly high risk/often operated on, and I have several that are bigger than 5cm. But they can't operate because there are too many and so it's pointless/they can't remove enough of the liver safely. And now some are growing and even if some are shrinking they aren't shrinking much. The overall impression was that this scan was "similar to prior." Which is better than significantly worse but I was really really hoping for better news. I'll have to set up an appointment with a hepatologist to really discuss the results but...at first glance this kind of sucks.

[quinloki]

Quin were you on gaiaonline back in the day

Got back into my account after years and it’s very nostalgic

Gonna go see if I can find some of my old RPs xD

Oh my goodness. Gaia Online.

Man. Throw back Thursday indeed.

Very tangentially Gaia just about saved my life.

I met some friends there, who I don’t talk to anymore - such is the way of life - but they gave me enough support that I went to Planned Parenthood for an issue (constant bleeding, not a pregnancy concern) when I didn’t have health insurance and no one else would even see me.

PP found a tumor, and I got surgery, and I only went because my friends on that website convinced me to go.

I had a massive tumor removal surgery - so big my organs were starting to shut down from the pressure.

So, I mean, when I say online friends are real friends, I’ve believed that for decades. (This was 2005/2006 somewhere in there).