As a Canadian I believe we get good average health care. But when you hear that you have neuroendocrine cancer you learn a lot fast. First of all you find out that most doctors, including oncologists know very little about the disease and how to treat it. The next thing you do is look to the US and in my case I took 2 trips to MD Anderson to find out that the best rated cancer hospital in the world does not have any more to offer for neuroendocrine cancer. So you look further and so do your friends. In my case my friend Venci S. told me about a doctor he saw on the internet who treated neuroendocrine cancers using radio isotopes. Venci played hockey in Germany for 13 years, knew the language and country well, and also was very familiar with their excellent health care system. He called Prof Dr. Baum and asked if he would see me and that is how my journey back to health occurred.
In January, 2010 I visited Dr Baum at his clinic in Bad Berka, Germany. The first few days I was tested extensively in the clinic, including Pet/Ct scans with Ga 68. This very sensitive test gave him a much better picture of the number, size and activity of the tumours. You felt an immediate relief that "this doctor knows a lot about this disease". The next week I received my first dose of PRRT with Lu177. I returned to Canada with no side effects and went skiing for a month.
I returned in May for a second round of PRRT, this time with Y90. Again I had no immediate side effects. However a few months later my blood counts dropped considerably, but not to the point that anything had to be done. I don't know if vitamin B12 helped but my counts recovered somewhat when I started taking it.
After a checkup (restaging as Prof Dr. Baum calls it) in November I returned in April 2011 for a third round of PRRT. Prof Dr Baum tried something a little different this time to target my liver tumours by delivering the Y90 PRRT first to the liver by a catheter from the leg artery. So I had a tube into the liver and Y90 was dripped directly to the liver for an extra long period of 90 minutes. The expectation is that there will be a 5 to 6 time increased effect on the liver tumours with an equivalent dose. My final meeting at 7PM on a Friday with Prof Dr. Baum to discuss the week of treatment was extremely uplifting to us as my wife Gail and daughter Kylie were there with me to hear the good news. The latest round of PRRT showed extremely good uptake in the liver and that is extremely important. So he expects a very good result the next time I return for a checkup. In the meantime the previous PRRT therapies have reduced the tumours more than 50% and some are not seen at all.
Prof Dr. Baum is a practicing doctor and more important, a researcher who works extremely hard. He now has treated over 1000 patients, all with a personalized approach. I love his humour, his diligence and that he leaves nothing to chance. He communicates with me better than my local doctors and I now think of him as a friend. You will too.
John M.