Lived To Be The Father Of The Bride
After having been diagnosed with a deadly form of brain cancer, Steve Holl just believed that nothing and no one could bring him back on track and be there for his daughter wedding. This was one of those moments that you never believed that you will get to live.
The possibility of survival in the patients that have this type of cancer – glioblastoma, are used to have the chances of living one in three or four, and up to one year more of a lifetime. Anyhow, Steve Holl has not just survived this cancer but as well, has got to dance with his daughter. This type of cancer is deadly as it is one that even the most skilled neurosurgeon cannot remove the entire tumor. Some of the tumor even remains or just bare cells of it and within some months, the cells develop and the tumor grows back on.
There are eight patients that have been provided with this vaccine so far and none of them have registered any cancer increase. The doctors’ believe that once these cells are put into the body again, they will alert the body that these cells do not belong there and they will be attacked in order to kill bigger and more parts of the cancer cells.
What Steve Holl has tried in order for him to be able to live longer and he hopes that he will get to live much longer than the doctors may say, was a new approach of the medicine – a custom – made vaccine. Having already 61 – years old he was courageous enough so as to try something new, beyond radiation and chemotherapy, and all this so that his daughter could say “To have my dad there was just one of those moments where you really want to stop time,” Eryn Holl says. “You want to look at him and hold on tight.”
The vaccine was a trial that the University of California San Francisco has made in order to find cure for this terrifying disease. The vaccine is made out of the patient’s tumor. They do the surgery first, try to remove as much of the tumor as they can and then they collect samples form that tumor and inject it again to the patient.
In keeping you alive you have to do more than just one vaccine, and Holl is at his 14iest vaccine since February. Holl believes that it makes sense for you to treat the cancer that exists in your body with your own body fights.
The doctor that has started this trial in the first place, Dr. Parsa, wants to cease using the word “cure” with this disease. He wants to turn this particular type of cancer into a disease like hypertension or diabetes, as it now allows you to take medicine to come in its help.
They intend to extent this trail in other hospitals as well, as long as they will approve of this to happen.
If it actually works, it will be one of the best discoveries ever by the doctors and people will forever be in debt to those that made this possible, especially the support they got from the starters from the, support of patient advocacy groups.11
