I was excited to hear from Charlene Kaforey last week that she had another good result in her latest scan. Those who have been following Charlene’s story will remember that she was diagnosed with mesothelioma in June 2007, and made the decision to try an alternative therapy at the ITL Alternative Cancer Treatment Clinic in Freeport, Bahamas.

Charlene believes she developed mesothelioma as a result of exposure to asbestos in materials used in household renovations and repairs when she was a child.

In January 2008, in her first visit to the clinic, she underwent an 8-week treatment called Immuno-Augmentation Therapy (IAT). Upon returning home, she administers her own vaccines several times a day, and continued a twice-daily intravenous vitamin C program with the help of a nurse friend. She has since cut back to once a week for the IV treatment.

In June, just after her 49th birthday, Charlene had her first CT scan since beginning the alternative medicine therapy, at her regular doctor at her home in New York. The tumor had shrunk by half! Also, her pleural thickening was reduced and her pleural effusion was gone.

Charlene undergoes CT scans about every four months at her physician in New York state, to check on the progress of her treatment, and returns to the ITL Clinic about every four months for a “tune-up.” This process involves drawing blood to see how patients are responding to the vaccines, and adjusting the shots. Each tune-up visit lasts two weeks.

She returned to ITL after the first good report, and was thrilled when her next check-up in New York, which she had last week, showed continued progress. The scan showed more shrinkage of the primary tumor mass, while everything else remains stable.

Charlene is thrilled with her results, and her choice to pursue an alternative treatment that many people greeted with skepticism.

“There are people that do it traditionally, and others choose something different,” Charlene says. “They say the psychological part is more than 50 percent of the battle. Everyone is different. You have to make a choice for you, to do what you believe in for yourself. Of course, sometimes the cancer is too strong. But when you believe in your decision, it makes it a lot easier to face the challenge.”

Tags: asbestos, Charlene Kaforey, ITL Alternative Cancer Treatment Clinic, mesothelioma

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 3:53 pm and is filed under News, People, Research/Treatment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.