My mother had immunotherapy treatment last year for lung cancer. It caused a lethal arrhythmia within 24 hours that they could not treat. She was dead by the end of that day. The cardiologist said this was a known side effect (he muttered 5% as she lay there). It's still not a perfect solution.

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ajross 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

To be fair, not knowing your mother's age or cancer, 5% is right around the mortality rate for major surgery in the elderly too. Things are just dangerous as you approach end of life and there are no good solutions for anything.

	▲	4 days ago \| parent [-]
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hinkley 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What are the odds of chemo sucking every moment of joy out of your life and then you die anyway.

I think I could deal with 20:1 odds if I had a clean before and after. Tell everyone you love them, hope to see them soon, then take your 95% chance of having an extra few years.

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frodo8sam 4 days ago | parent [-]

That's pretty much what happens when you get a stemcell transplant. Luckily there is steady improvement in the survival rate. This is a very old therapy by now of course. But let's hope the various form of immuno therapy take the same trajectory, getting a little better every year.

	▲	hinkley 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Hank Green just did a follow-up about a question about “who has the most DNA”, where he back pedaled heavily on his previous attempt to answer. I learned, as he had, that sometimes bone marrow transplants don’t take and one option is to administer another, or several, which could make you much more chimeric than the average stem cell recipient. But I don’t understand how the marrows don’t end up fighting each other in a death match. Is that a special property of marrow?

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John23832 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm really sorry for you loss (and the way it happened).

That said, we all know that these are not perfect solutions. They save some more, they don't save all.