Bill's Possible Treatment Options- Mike Scammon

Bill has three options at this point: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Surgery would involve removing the melanoma and the ring of tissue around it (in order to prevent missing any cancer cells). Chemotherapy would kill cancer cells that have spread throughout the body. Radiation therapy would kill cancer cells that have spread beyond the tumor.

I would personally choose to use chemotherapy. Chemotheapy and radiation do the same thing except radiation is more of a targeted procedure and chemotherapy gets spread throughout the body. This is because chemotherapy is put in by intravenous, thus getting the chemo-chemical into the blood stream which could spread the chemical farther and reach many parts of the body in hopes of killing more cancer cells.

Bill's Options

There are a few options that bill and others can take to recover. These options are surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy.

Surgery includes the actual removing of the tumor at the exact location and diagnosing the different location it actually affects.

Chemotherapy is the use of chemicals and drugs to kill the cancer cells within the body

Radiation therapy is the use of high energy X rays to reduce or to kill off cancer cells just like chemotherapy.

I think for Bill, Surgery will be the best fit option because he can get it over with just a one time removal but there can be some pain afterwards. Surgery has been one of the more successful options and that it is very fast and effective.

For skin cancer, there are three main types of effective treatments. Surgery, Chemotherapy, and radiation therapy are the most common treatments.

Surgery- Surgery is the most effective type of treatment. Doctors are able to locate the tumour, and be able to actually see what parts of the body it has effected.

Chemotherapy- Chemo are chemicals injected into the body to effect the cancerous and noncancerous cells.

Radiation therapy- Radiation therapy reduces the amount of cancerous cells in the effected area. It can also prevent, and kill cancerous cells as well.

In my opinion, I would go with surgery. It is the most effected treatments, and also the fastest. Although the healing process may take a while, and it may be painful, it is always worth it. There are always pain killers to refer to.

Treatments for Skin Cancer- Ramy A.

Treatments for skin cancer are so various. There are three that i looked into that look pretty effective and enough to help people like bill with their benign/malignant tumor cells.

1- Surgery is one way to get rid of all or just parts of the tumor. This procedure is used to help surgically remove the tumor/ establish what stage the cancer is at/ or treating the cancer and symptoms.

2- Chemotherapy, also know as Chemo. helps stop the spread of tumors. What this is, is often times pills, Injection in the veins; muscle; abdominal; and arteries. Chemo helps work on cancerous and noncancerous tumors. Often time this even affects normal cells which may cause side effects towards the body. so any additional medicine is permitted during your therapy.

3- Radiation Therapy is a third way people fight off tumors. This is radiation that kills, prevents, or just decreases the size of tumor cells. Radiation also affects the normal cells. Luckily these normal cells are able to recover from the damage back to their normal stages of life.

• External beam radiation- radiation sent out from a machine (outside the body) into the body to help kill of tumors.
  
• Internal Radiation therapy- place sources of radiation as closely as possible to the tumor to kill off any harmful cells.
  

In my opinion, I think that surgically removing tumors is the best way to approach tumor cells. If necessary then i would also continue to take on radiation therapy to kill off any other tumor cells that Doctors weren't able to reach to.

Treatments for bill

1. surgery, raidation therapy, electro chemotherapy

2. surgery. surgery is a common procedure for many sicknesses and is the most common type of cure for this specific diease. it has the lowest risk factor as opposed to the other two and in most cases is what is performed by many doctors across the country when treating this disease

3. i agree with Kristyna because she chose the same route i did. it makes the most sense and is the most logical choice.

Bill's Treatments

Three Treatment Bill could use are:

• Surgical Excision
• Chemotherapy
• Immunotherapy

For Bill I would choose to get it surgically removed first. It is still in an early stage and they could surgically remove it before it starts spreading throughout his body and get rid of it. This would probably be the easiest so he wouldn't have to go through chemo when he might be able to catch it early enough and surgically remove it.

Neurofibromatosis 1

Neurofibromatosis is a genetic disorder of the nervous system that usually affect the development and growth of nerve cell tissues. They cause tumors to grow on nerves and create other issues such as skin changes and bone deformities.

on the left is the beginning of a tumor in the dermal, and on the right it shows the plexiform neurofibroma with antibodies against s-100 protiens.

affected body system:

the nervous system

symptoms:

-Cataracts at

young ages

-Learning disabilities

- Brown colored skin marks

-Facial weaknesses

-Ringing in ears

-Balance Problems

- Changes in vision

-Headaches

-Freckles in creases of armpits/groin

-seizures

-high blood pressure

-scoliosis

-speech impairment

-optic nerve tumors

-Early puberty

sources:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://atlasgeneticsoncology.org/Tumors/Images/NeurofibromFig1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://atlasgeneticsoncology.org/Tumors/NeurofibromaID5098.html&usg=__4LWCs3wcv73x9wVHKdxGFUUSTsc=&h=417&w=312&sz=121&hl=en&start=8&um=1&tbnid=nKRD32caTjr3WM:&tbnh=125&tbnw=94&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dneurofibromatosis%2Btype%2B1%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1

Leukemia

Leukemia is cancer of the bone marrow and blood.

Some symptoms are:

• Fatigue
• Malaise (vague feeling of bodily discomfort)
• Abnormal bleeding
• Excessive bruising
• Weakness
• Reduced exercise tolerance
• Weight loss
• Bone or joint pain
• Infection and fever
• Abdominal pain or "fullness"
• Enlarged spleen, lymph nodes, and liver

Body systems affected:

The main body system affected by Leukemia are the skeletal system, and the cardiovascular system because leukemia is cancer of the bones which is in the skeletal system and also of the bone marrow and the bone marrow makes blood so it affects the cardiovascular system.

http://www.topnews.in/health/files/leukaemia.gif

http://www.leukemia-lymphoma.org/all_page?item_id=9346

i got it :)

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)

 Symptoms: 

Difficulty breathing/swallowing

Gagging or choking easily

Slow or abnormal speech

Voice changes/hoarseness 

Cramping in muscles

Muscle weakness that slowly gets worse, usually starting in one part of the body, like the arm or hand and slowly making it hard to lift things, climb stairs or even walk

Body Systems Affected:

Neuromuscular 

Other Information:

ALS is also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

A relatively rare disease, there are - at any given time in the United States - 40,000 people living with ALS. There are 5,000 new diagnosis a year. 

There is no known cure for ALS. While there are treatments that may extend a person's life with the disease, right now there is no way to reverse the disease or even just stop it from getting worse.

In 90% of all cases of ALS, the cause is unknown. The other 10% of the time, it is caused by a genetic defect. 

ALS progresses differently in different patients. 

Besides being related to someone who has ALS hereditarily, there are no known risk factors for ALS, which puts anyone and everyone at risk.

ALS will, gradually, eliminate a person's ability to care for themselves. 20% of patients live five years after their initial diagnosis, leaving the other 80% to die within three to five years of being diagnosed.

Sources:

http://kidshealth.org/kid/grownup/conditions/als.html

https://www.google.com/health/ref/Amyotrophic+lateral+sclerosis

http://www.als-mda.org/publications/als/als12_2.html

http://www.mghmind.org/als.html