Adele Ferguson - Baby brother after discovery of cancers

IT’S HARD to concentrate on everyday things after you’ve learned that someone in your family has cancer.

In my case, it’s my baby brother, not really a baby considering our ages, but he is No. 9 among the ten children in the family. I am No. 2. No jokes please.

There are only seven of us left. No. 1 brother died of a sudden heart attack in his 40s. He led a fast life as a salesman of some kind of airplane apparatus and spent many a night entertaining clients at late dinners. We’re sure that’s what killed him.

No.5, a sister, also was young at death although I’m not sure about the why except it wasn’t heart and it wasn’t cancer. No.4, a brother, was another heart victim as were our parents.

No. 4 had heart problems over a period of years, including a stent, and his final wishes were not to use any extraordinary methods to keep him alive. They didn’t He lasted about a week after they brought him home from the hospital.

No. 9 bad a tiny tumor on top of his skull which doctors have removed. It was the size, he tells me, of half a marble and a biopsy determined it was squamous cancer which is the middle one of three types of skin cancers.

BASAL CELL carcinoma is the most common type of skin cancer and is relatively harmless. Squamous occurs when underlying skin cells are damaged and this leads to development of a tumor. The worst, of course, is melanoma which is malignant or life threatening. It usually appears in a place that has been constantly exposed to sunlight.

I know about squamous cancer because I had it in three tiny growths (matchhead size) I’ve had removed from the left side of my neck over a period of years. The location was, of course, due to the fact when I drove a car my left side was the most exposed to the sun. I was reared in the south.

My brother’s treatment includes putting some tiny beads in the place where the tumor grew which are supposed to help prevent the reappearance of the cancer cells. I’m told the beads are gold. I read in the Wall Street Journal this week about a similar strategy of fighting cancer with cancer.

RESEARCHERS are taking tumor cells from mice, encapsulating them in beads the size of a pea made from a seaweed derived sugar called agarose and implanting them in the abdomens of cancer patients. The cells in the beads secrete proteins researchers believe could signal a patient’s cancer to stop growing, shrink or even die.

So far, at least 30 patients have been treated with the cancer beads, but it’s too early to know how well they work.

My brother has more problems than waiting for an advanced treatment. This has all just happened in recent weeks. He noticed that he was having trouble with his short term memory and went to a doctor fearing a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. A thorough checkup turned up the brain tumor and another tumor in or on a lung near the aorta. Why they call it a brain tumor I don’t know since it was growing on the outside of the skull, he said, next to the place on your head that is open when you are born that they call a baby’s soft spot and closes as you grow.

He is in amazingly good spirits. The doctors are giving him a recovery time from the brain tumor and then they’ll tackle the lung tumor. He has insurance that covers everything. Do me a favor? Add him to your prayers.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)