A Journal About Mesothelioma From Diagnosis To Recovery.
Read My Research Report Regarding 9/11 Asbestos Exposure (2mb PDF File)
Klaus
Brauch begins Second Line Treatment June 9th, 2006
                          
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As of June 8th 2006, it will have been exactly 60 months, or FIVE full years, since I first learned that I had an incurable type of lung cancer, caused by asbestos exposure. I was told that I had right pleural epithelial Mesothelioma, an aggressive tumor of the mesothelium, the smooth lining of the chest cavity and the lung. Knowing what this implied, my local thoracic surgeon, perhaps in an attempt to delay the shock, refused to give me a specific prognosis. Instead, he told me: "You’re an intelligent guy. You can figure it out for yourself." The "it" of consequence was the grim statistic that virtually everyone dies of this disease within two years and many die a lot sooner than that. While rare in comparison to other cancers, Mesothelioma still affects about four thousand victims each year in the United States alone. Figures for other countries are not readily available but are expected to be equally as high in most industrialized nations, especially those from the eastern block where no safeguards against asbestos were implemented. When my wife conducted a quick search on the internet, she and I learned the grim facts that although the exact amount of time left to me wasn’t pre-determined, it probably lay somewhere between the 6 and 18 months granted to Mesothelioma sufferers on average. At the age of fifty-one I was suddenly being told that I was soon going to die, leaving my wife and three daughters with a hefty mortgage, interrupted lives, and many unfulfilled dreams. All our hopes for a new and prosperous life in California were shattered in one horrifying moment.
This journal is intended to provide a comprehensive
chronology of my illness, from detection and diagnosis, to selection of
treatment options, to the actual surgery and adjuvant therapies, and finally to
the period of my recovery. I will reveal what I learned, felt, and thought about,
as I faced my own mortality and made the choice to risk everything and fight for
my life by entering a risky clinical trial almost three thousand miles from
home.
I write this as a source of useful information and
inspiration to both patients and loved ones who are afflicted with Mesothelioma.
I do this because Mesothelioma is an aggressive and intractable cancer, with no
standard approach to treatment, and its grim statistics deny many patients and
families the slightest hope. Contributing to the glum outlook is the ignorance,
the pessimism, and I may even say defeatism, of the medical community at large.
The majority of doctors and health care providers don’t believe that serious
intervention is warranted because they are convinced no intervention will help.
I am living proof that this is wrong, and that prompt and aggressive treatment
can indeed turn a death sentence into a future of hope. To those of you afflicted with Mesothelioma, my heart goes
out to you. I wish you well and hope that you receive the excellent advice,
strong support and quality care that I received from the doctors, nurses and
institutions who cared for me. I even have nice things to say about my health
insurance plan, which unstintingly approved every effort that was made to save
my life. To the families of Mesothelioma patients I say take heart. There are
examples of progress against this dread disease in recent years and new
treatments are being developed for cancer in general with each passing month.
While Mesothelioma sorely lacks specific research investment and there is
limited awareness of it in the public mind, those of us who are survivors of
this cancer are engaged in the struggle to find solutions to all that follow. My
best wishes to all of you. Figure 1: The author
in the spring of 2002, on the road to
recovery. Klaus Axel Brauch Huntington Beach,
California June 2006
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