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Posted on: 07/05/2003

 

Saturday » July 5 » 2003

B.C. woman responding to cutting-edge cancer vaccine

Grania Litwin

Times Colonist

Friday, July 04, 2003

The B.C. woman who has been battling a brain tumour for more than two years and is the only Caucasian to be accepted into a cutting-edge Japanese cancer vaccine study, has been feeling stronger and getting fewer headaches in the past 12 months, following her last treatment.

"I had a scan just a couple of weeks ago that showed the tumour has not grown in more than a year," said Ann Grace in a telephone interview from Nanaimo, where she is staying with her mother.

Her Japanese medical team is delighted, since this kind of tumour is usually very aggressive. Her North American specialists are puzzled, since they gave her just one year to live after she refused chemotherapy and radiation in the spring of 2001.

In April 2002, the Times Colonist ran a feature about Grace that revealed the harrowing tale of how her father had died of a brain tumour in 1995. Her family moved to Iowa after that, but five years later one of her two sons was felled by a rampant brain tumour. She nursed both father and son until the end, only to discover a few months after her 13-year-old son died that she too had developed a rare, invasive and terminal brain tumour in her motor cortex -- where surgery was impossible because it could paralyze her.

After refusing radiation and chemotherapy, having seen how they ravaged her father and son, Grace heard about a Japanese study and was accepted into it because she was a "clean" patient, having turned down all other forms of treatment.

She travelled to Japan twice, for two rounds of injections at Jeiki Medical University Hospital in Tokyo, where researchers are experimenting with a vaccine made from a patient's own blood cells and brain tumour.

"I am feeling so good," she said this week. "I'm sure the Japanese therapy is working. I absolutely believe that. I am also seeing an acupuncturist, have been using several different alternative therapies, and did a super cleanse . . . the whole package is keeping me going."

She recently travelled to Iowa to see her other son, who is at university there, and have a checkup with her American specialists.

"They looked at me in awe but didn't like the fact I am not doing what they want, like having radiation. One of them said, 'You're alive and you absolutely shouldn't be. This should have spread throughout your brain by now. We're going to downgrade you. Something has happened. Perhaps we misdiagnosed you, or the Japanese therapy is working, or you're a miracle.'

"They don't quite know what to think," she said with a chuckle.

Meanwhile, Grace is planning to take up dancing, singing, and is already doing Pilates exercises.

"I am becoming more flexible, regaining movement and feeling stronger on my right side. This is just very recent, in the last six months. The first time I was able to put my thumb to my little finger I burst into tears."

The last two years have marked a major transition in her life, she says.

"I know this tumor has invaded my brain and is inoperable, but I don't believe it's my enemy anymore. It's almost as if I have to absorb it into myself . . . . I'm doing that by really believing in myself and walking away from any negativity."

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