{"id":1282,"date":"2011-11-09T12:43:13","date_gmt":"2011-11-09T20:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/?p=1282"},"modified":"2011-11-09T12:43:13","modified_gmt":"2011-11-09T20:43:13","slug":"a-different-vaccination-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/09\/a-different-vaccination-question\/","title":{"rendered":"A Different Vaccination Question"},"content":{"rendered":"

This isn\u2019t a post about vaccinating babies; I\u2019ve already covered that<\/a>. And it isn\u2019t a post about vaccinating teenage girls against the HPV virus to prevent cervical cancer. Speaking of\u2026 Have you seen this Saturday Night Live skit, Lil\u2019 Poundcake, the doll that administers HPV injections.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Ah, good times.<\/p>\n

This post is about vaccinating me.<\/p>\n

For many years (12?), the University of Washington Tumor Vaccine Group has been working on a vaccination to prevent H<\/strong>uman E<\/strong>pidermal growth factor R<\/strong>eceptor 2<\/strong>-positive (HER2+) Breast Cancer. My cancer was HER2+. I am at risk for recurrence, and a candidate for the trial.<\/p>\n

Now, here comes my terribly un-technical understanding of the trial. HER2+ cancer cells have more receptor sites that enable them to grow and divide faster. The folks at UW have isolated the bits of the HER2+ part of the cancer cell and are mixing them with an agent in an effort to get the immune system to recognize and kill these cells.<\/p>\n

The purpose of this trial is to find out how much of the agent makes it most effective. Everyone enrolled will get three injections of the vaccination and varying amounts of the agent, 28 days apart.<\/p>\n

My oncologist suggested I look into the trial, but participation is up to me. I\u2019ve had the paperwork on my desk for 6 weeks and I can\u2019t decide. Here are the issues I\u2019m thinking about:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • At 6.5 years past my diagnosis, I am fairly low risk for a recurrence. Do I really need the vaccine?<\/li>\n
  • Will I cause myself harm? Will long-term side effects appear later?<\/li>\n
  • When I was on Herceptin, a miracle drug for patients with HER 2+ cancer my heart showed a rapid and alarming drop in ejection fraction, pumping capacity, which caused my oncologist to discontinue the drug immediately. My heart recovered but no one knows if we did any long-term damage.<\/li>\n
  • If I don\u2019t get the vaccine and have a recurrence then it\u2019s too late. No second chances.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    What would you do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This isn\u2019t a post about vaccinating babies; I\u2019ve already covered that. And it isn\u2019t a post about vaccinating teenage girls against the HPV virus to prevent cervical cancer. Speaking of\u2026 Have you seen this Saturday Night Live skit, Lil\u2019 Poundcake, the doll that administers HPV injections. Ah, good times. This post is about vaccinating me. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancer","category-hmn-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1282"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1286,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282\/revisions\/1286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}