Allergy Symptoms Can Be a Cancer Warning!

First, I need to give you some background of my experience in this subject, and that has to start with the knowledge that allergy problems were inherited through several generations of my family, but I was relatively free of them compared to some other family members of the last two generations.  I never had any asthma, and for years had only average nasal allergy problems of the normal variety of seasonal allergies.  However, as I aged, those allergies grew more pronounced, and I became allergic to more environmental types of allergies like house dust (or dust of any kind, for that matter), dust mites, molds, etc.  The dust was first, and came after a move to the Arizona desert, where wind played a prominent part in contributing to the problem.  I had my own business and sold at an open-air market on a gravel and dirt base, and people constantly scuffing dirt as they walked up and down the aisles created a constant assault of dust on my nose.  I began developing sinus infections, had a severely congested head most all the time, and developed a constant post-nasal drip that caused a cough.  Luckily I only sold there during winter months, and while summers were spent in an outdoor atmosphere, the areas were well forested, had little wind, and not much of any dust to speak of.  I managed to live with it, although I would have to spend up to a week sometimes hiding under a cold cloth covering my head to combat the sensitivity to light, noise, and the nausea that plagued me from the post-nasal drip.

In 1996, years after we had moved to northern California, we bought a home that had evidence of a water leak in the ceiling of the bathroom and a spare bedroom that shared a common wall.  We were able to fix the leak immediately, but it was not for another full year, after being severely flooded by the nearby river, that we tore into the ceiling and wall and repaired them.  There was a lot more damage than we’d suspected and much of the wall had to be replaced, as well as parts of the ceiling.  The area inside the wall was full of mold.  This was prior to common knowledge of the dangers of toxic mold.  The flooding we’d experienced throughout the house was at 3 feet high through the entire house, and an additional foot deep in the large family room where I spent a great deal of time, since I worked from home most of the time.

During that first year, just a couple of months after moving in, I experienced the worst sinus infection I’d ever had, that took an entire 11 days of time off work before I could drag myself back to the office to pick up the pieces.  This was in November, I believe.  On New Year’s Day of 1997, less than two months later, our home was flooded along with many others in the area.  Fortunately, the river only remained high enough to flood the house for a little less than 24 hours, and with the help of a lot of friends, we got all the damaged furniture out, removed carpets and flooring, and moved back into the house in three days so we could keep small heaters going in each room to dry out the walls, none of which had any insulation inside.  We could not afford to replace them all.  At that time, the help we received consisted of: $400 from the Red Cross to replace the bed at a local store, which only paid for the mattress set, we had to buy the actual bed.  A determination from FEMA that repairs would be $15,000 so we were told we could get a low-interest SBA (Small Business Administration) Loan in that amount.  Unfortunately, I could not get a bid for those same repairs to come in under $37,000!  That meant we had to do the repairs we could handle, on our own, and sub-contract the rest out. 

This meant we had to live in the house while we did the repairs, as we were seriously strapped for money, having just bought the house less than six months prior to flooding.  We’d already started doing some work on it, including our bedroom, where in addition to other renovations we covered the walls in beautiful wallpaper that fit the style of mid-forties farm-style home that it was.  After the flooding, the mold that developed beneath the wallpaper (it had a fabric back), caused it to lift at some of the seams, and unknowing of the dangers, I cleaned it as best I could and stuck it back down.  I found I could not sleep in there from then on without keeping my head almost out the window, no matter how cold it got in winter.  I had to have fresh air.  I didn’t know it then, but that was because of the mold allergy I was having.  It was several years later when mold made all the news with the allergy problems it was now causing in homes.

Unknowingly, we’d bought a home that had flooded several times previously, but we didn’t find that out until after it flooded again in 1997.  We were NOT listed within any flood zone, and had not purchased flood insurance when we bought the home.  When I asked the FEMA people about that, they said that the flood zone maps were seriously out of date and could not be trusted, they were incorrect…

The next six-eight months were spent in restoring this home to order on weekends and nights after dinner.  I was working long hours each day at work, but had to continue on the house whenever that part of the day ended.  We lived with fine river silt that had sifted into the sub-flooring, we had to do a lot of sawing inside, as we had no garage or other outside structure to use in bad weather, which we had a lot of that year.  Then dry-wall dust, dry-wall “mud” dust, and the silt that covered everything outside that got tracked inside was added, along with all the other construction dust we created.  It took what seemed forever to dry out the walls inside, before we could install new carpet.  In the kitchen we actually had to remove the lower cabinets, as the walls were still damp and moldy behind them three months later, to allow them to thoroughly dry.  We had only wood heat in the house, something very common in the area. 

I became very allergic to wood smoke during this time, and when I was given sulfa for my sinus infection, something I’d taken several times previously with no problems, I had such violent projective vomiting I had to have Demerol to stop it.  I would no more get over one very serious sinus infection than I would have another.  This went on until we had all the dust problems inside solved, a period of four or more months.  It made working on everything very difficult. 

I had been raised in a very much “do-it-yourself” household and family.  My grandfather, father, and step-father had all been carpenters or building contractors.  My grandmother and mother were excellent seamstresses, and not only sewed their own clothing; they made ours until we learned at a very young age to make them ourselves.  They bought old used overstuffed furniture like couches and chairs, repaired the frames and completely recovered them.  They made all their own drapes, curtains and other window coverings.  This followed through all through the house.  My mother even made all my coats until I left home to marry at 17 years old.  They refinished old wood furniture that was found in junk shops in those days, but is highly prized as antiques today.  They did everything around the home for themselves, I never remember anyone calling in a repairman for anything.  Unfortunately, my husband at this time was not “handy,” but he did learn to try, so he was a help.

We only had to use a sub-contractor for repair of the drywall, some plumbing, and a change to the bathroom window.  Everything else was done by me, my husband, or my brother, who came to offer help for a short time.

Unfortunately, the marriage that had been bad for a long time got much worse through all these trials, and in May 1998 we separated and divorced.  I moved to Alaska, and my first job there was housed in an old residence in town that had a dirt floor in the basement area, and the door to that basement ended about a foot above the floor.  The entire structure had mold that had spread from the basement, and I had even worse allergy problems due to that.  It took me eight months to find another suitable job to support myself, and by that time I was seriously into health problems.  Being in an entirely new part of the country, and not familiar with any doctors, I tried several before I finally settled with what I had, since none of them were even interested in seeking the cause of all the bizarre reactions I was now having to things I’d never shown any allergy to, previously.  They only wanted to treat symptoms. 

These problems increased over the next two years, until finally I was able to get a recommendation from a nurse I knew about a doctor in town who was a good diagnostician, and he began putting me through a maze of tests.  Other than the allergies I had a high white blood cell count, which he said indicated high inflammation in the body, and that was what he was trying to find as the culprit. 

He explained also that allergic reactions are controlled by our auto-immune systems, and it is only when those systems become impaired for some reason that allergies would react differently than normal.  I had now had severe and strange allergic reactions since 1996, and it was now 2001.  During the rest of that year and eight months of 2002 I went through a myriad of tests, and basically found out I did not have any of a wide range of awful things.  It was only when they decided I must have repair surgery for a serious prolapsed bladder that they decided I needed a chest X-Ray before surgery.  No doctor had given me one for the previous five years (even though I’d smoked for many years), since my lungs always sounded so wonderful… each of them always commented on that.

In August of that year, they did the X-Ray, to find a very large tumor in my right lung.  So large, in fact, that they didn’t believe it could be cancer, and insisted on waiting three months for a final diagnosis after watching it, since it was in a very awkward location to do a needle biopsy.  In December they confirmed the cancer diagnosis, and by January I’d had a second opinion and was beginning a regimen of chemotherapy.  After conferring with a heart specialist, needed for the surgery they proposed, it was decided that the size of the tumor had to be reduced before surgery could be attempted.  It was scheduled for May.

Once I began chemotherapy, my allergic problems decreased; according to my oncologist, it is very good at reducing allergy problems, which are, in fact, aggravated by the cancer, since the immune system also controls cancer cells in your body that we’re exposed to on a daily basis, by killing them.  But, again, when it is impaired, and cannot perform that duty well, we develop active cancer.  So, although that much was known, the allergy/cancer relationship is (or was) unusual enough that it was not associated with the blood cell count, or possibility of cancer by any of the five doctors I saw during this period of time.

I have actually not come in contact with anyone else who suffered from these same problems before being diagnosed with cancer, and would be very interested in hearing from any of you out there that have exhibited a similar history prior to being diagnosed with cancer.  I have no idea how unusual this could be, but after being diagnosed, my doctors have all agreed that I had been carrying that first tumor around for at least five years, and due to the beginning of those symptoms, I would bet it was six years, just when my allergies went crazy.  Suffering from cancer for that long without diagnosis is the worst possible scenario, and it led to my being unable to have surgery at all. 

I have been told all along by my doctors that there IS no cure for my type of cancer without surgery.  In other words, I was terminal, although I didn’t connect that at first, and I have never used that word to describe myself.  Most cancer patients don’t, since it puts you in a “defeatist” position.  Only after moving to Oregon and having a second oncologist there, did he tell me (unbidden) that I’d already outlived my life expectancy by more than a full year!  That has now lengthened to more than four years since diagnosis, when they begin these types of statistics.  Since I was not in good health when diagnosed due to having the cancer for such a long prior period, I was not expected to survive more than a few months, apparently.  Actually, the statistics now say that 70% of all those diagnosed with lung cancer die within the first 9 months after diagnosis, and the survivor rate overall to five years is still a “dismal” (in the words of the American Cancer Society) 15% according to their 2006 statistics.  Lung cancer kills more people than any other type of cancer, and in fact, kills more than the next three in order, all totals combined! 

So, have my allergies improved?  Not by any means, and I now know that I can gauge how my cancer is doing if I watch them carefully.  In 2003 I had 10-1/2 months of five combination chemotherapy regimens, and one set of 37 radiation treatments in combination with chemotherapy.  The last of the chemo, Taxiterre was killing me, and they stopped it several weeks earlier than planned, I was in such bad shape.  Two weeks later we drove out of Interior Alaska in minus 40 degree temperatures, to Central Oregon where the winter weather was less severe on my lungs and near our children.  However, we lived at the foot of the east side of the Cascade Mountains south of Bend, at an elevation of 4250 ft., and the altitude, the long cold winters and pumice dust that substitutes for soil there, were very hazardous for me.  My radiation treatments damaged my esophagus and bronchial tubes, and with allergy post-nasal drip created additional breathing problems.  I had only sporadic chemotherapy during 1994 and 1995 as a preventative measure.  My original tumor was left with a slight shadow, which they hoped was just scar tissue, and did not change during that time.  In late 1995, due to worsened allergy problems and several cases of bronchitis just a few months apart, I asked to have another PET Scan done, which can detect active cancer too small for an X-Ray or CT Scan to detect.  I’d had one done when I first was diagnosed, but none since then.  They were pretty new and are quite expensive, costing several thousand dollars at that time.

While I hoped that there was no cancer, and certainly didn’t feel as bad as I had originally when diagnosed, I was concerned about the allergic symptoms I was having, and I’d not had bronchitis for many, many years, since I was quite young.

The results of the PET Scan were hard to take.  I saw the results on a computer screen, looking at a full body silhouette in white, with active cancer to show up as small black dots.  It looked much like the full body targets you see in images of an indoor target range in movies and on TV.  What it showed as cancer looked just like someone had taken a machine gun and sprayed my entire torso with it.  The spots of cancer ranged from under one armpit down through my chest and both lungs, through my abdomen, and down into the groin area.  At this point I became much less than analytical or effective in diagnosing what I was seeing.  I couldn’t even think to count them all, but know there had to be more than a dozen of these black “holes” in my body.

However, the oncologist put an optimistic, upbeat sound to the report.  He said again, as he had often said, that he knew it would be back, and this was a very good sign.  There were no major, serious tumors, and none of the normal metastasize places that are so difficult to treat (like liver, bones, and brain tumors) were affected.  He said he thought they had been there for some time, they were all very small, and he said they “were hiding under a bush.”  He said the lucky ones get this kind, and some live a year, three years, five years, and up to ten years, in his experience without any appreciable change in them.  This was to be my last visit to him, as we were preparing then to move in another month or two to a more temperate area of northern California.  He had set me up with a recommended oncologist in Medford, Oregon, which was where I planned to seek treatment, it being the best of my choices for where we were going to be living.

It took us much longer to move than expected, and when we took the first load down I was still sick with bronchitis and not feeling well, so I stayed there while Jim made another five loads over a period of a full month, to the day, due to severe weather, flooding and having to cross two mountain ranges in-between locations.  Thus, it was near the end of January before I could get in to see this new oncologist in Medford, and while he ordered X-Rays and a CT-Scan, he was leaving immediately, and I did not get immediate results.  About a week later I got a call from him, with devastating news.  One of the tumors in my right lung (again) had grown in the resulting two months to what he called “fist-sized.”  It looked very bad.  He proposed that I come back in and that we start another of the new “targeted” chemotherapy treatments, called Alimta.  I’d not heard of this, and it was infused, where the other two I’d had were in pill form.  He said this had less severe side effects (I’d been unable to take the other two, due to the severity of side effects), but was still very new and not a whole lot was known about results.  It didn’t sound good, and I felt it was a bottom-of-the-barrel choice.  I assumed I’d had everything I could have for my kind of cancer, and they felt wouldn’t gain anything from having them again – I was so devastated by the diagnosis I didn’t ask anything.  It appeared that if he was right, unless this worked immediately, I would be dead within a few weeks.  Again, one of the most prominent clues to the cancer growth was renewed allergy activity that suddenly increased to large proportions.

Luckily, after absorbing the news I was able, with the Lord’s and Jim’s help, to pull it together and put myself quickly in the right mindset to help this medication as much as I could, and with all these things working for me, it far surpassed the doctor’s expectations, and within several months it had reduced this large tumor to 50% of it’s size.  I had, with this rapid growth additional problems of fluid on the lung and coughing of quite a bit of blood.  It took just one aspiration to remove most of the fluid, which helped a great deal with the severe breathing problems I was having.  The large tumor size restricted the room my lung could expand in, and then when a large amount of fluid further restricted its space, it forced me to use oxygen full time for awhile.  Gradually, however, I reduced and then eliminated it over a period of a couple of months, and my blood oxygen levels stayed high.

I worked hard to bring myself to good health through the spring, and in June the chemo was stopped, as it was no longer performing effectively and the doctor grew concerned about cumulative side effects since so little was known about reactions to this new therapy.  We monitored, so it could be started again if needed.  We didn’t know if it would work again, but then I had run out of other options.

In late July we found a house to buy, after searching for more than a year, so in addition to the active summer of company we had, I plunged into packing things up to move.  I had less than a month to do this, which was quite short due to all the activity going on.  We moved the last few days of August, a full week before scheduled, and it was quite hectic.  Luckily my friend Anita was a lot of help with this, or I don’t know how I’d have survived it, and as it was, by the time it was all in here, but a lot still needed put away when my allergies began acting up again, seriously.  They continued to worsen, and after I saw the doctor in September, shortly after the first of the month, they worsened again, and I contracted bronchitis once more (chronic bronchitis is usual with this kind of cancer), further dragging me down.  By October I was coughing blood again and the large amount of congestion from allergies was giving me a lot of breathing problems; both of these things added to my cough and the blood I was coughing, so I had to limit my activity a great deal to where it was less severe, as the amount of blood grew.

By now I was into the deep fatigue that signifies cancer growth, and other symptoms I thought I recognized, so by the time I returned to the doctor Nov. 16, I was half expecting the report I received.  The tumor had grown alarmingly again, adding back 50% of the growth that it had lost earlier in the year.  We began chemotherapy again that very day, as I had prepared for that eventuality by taking the medication I had to take prior to treatment.  Then it was an anxious wait for the 21-day period of the treatment to end, to see if it had any effect on the tumor.  Since it had taken two months the first time for it to reduce size in the tumor, but had arrested further growth from the beginning, we didn’t expect anything beyond that, but we were praying, since one week after beginning the chemo, on Thanksgiving Day, the blood immediately stopped!  While on the surface this looked very good, I’ve been fooled before because I didn’t know all that was involved in some things, so we were hoping and praying for the best, but trying to stay prepared for the worst, the safest way to approach something like this.

My return just two days ago, December 7^th, brought excellent news.  Not only was there a noticeable reduction of the size on the X-Ray, the doctor was ecstatic about the blood disappearing.  He was amazed at the results, since he’d had nothing approaching this level of response in a patient prior to mine.  He’s been calling me the “Alimta Poster Girl” all along…

I had already begun to feel better.  This therapy does not help the allergy problem like “regular” chemotherapy, but because the steroid I take for just three days around treatment time, does have a beneficial effect on them it helps during that time.  It has done that again, reducing them to a more manageable form of attack.  Of course, I finished it last night, so now I have to wait and see if it returns, or the aggressive chemotherapy attack has worked well enough to bring them under better control.  

Generally, they fluctuate a lot, since for the next eight days the chemo will work to destroy the immune system, they will get worse, and then the last 10 days prior to the end of the period they improve as the immune system builds back up. 

There is also a direct response to the activity of the cancer on my allergy problems, and during rapid cancer growth, the allergy problems always increase.  And that stands to reason, because of the action of the immune system.  The reason this chemo has a 21-day wait between treatments is because for the first ten days after treatment, it heavily assaults your immune system, and then the next ten days are given over to letting it recover, in an effort to keep it from so much serious damage and being further compromised.  If I stay “attuned” to this I can see a correlation in the physical changes my body goes through during these times. 

Even if you do not have the allergy problems I do, I believe that if you work hard to stay attuned to what your body is telling you, you can mitigate some of the problems associated with chemotherapy, and some can be completely eliminated through proper diet and nutrition.  I urge you all to find out all you can on your own about this.  Did you know that there are certain foods that are very good for you if you suffer constipation and/or diarrhea due to chemotherapy or your cancer?  There are also lists of foods you should avoid that will make those and other side effects (such as nausea and vomiting) more severe in some cases. 

While I did not ever focus too much on nutrition and eating healthily prior to having cancer, I did want to take an active part in my recovery and treatment, and I found that these things, coupled with exercise, made a tremendous difference in my health, along with the other strategies I’ve outlined in these Cancer pages.  Besides my faith, I believe these things have not only extended my life, with God’s will, they have improved it a great deal more than what it would have been without these changes.

I am constantly amazed at the intricacies of our bodies that I discover on my journey through this maze of information and discovery as I continue to learn more.  I have found that the relationship between the immune system and stress (which I suffer from), and which the immune system attempts to control, the immune system and allergies (which I suffer from), and which it attempts to control, the immune system and cancer cells (which I suffer from), and it attempts to control, have all played a role in the development of my cancer.  Now, the chemotherapy also plays a role because it affects the performance of that same beleaguered immune system. 

All this information makes it infinitely more important to protect the immune system to afford myself of this natural protection to my body.  From that knowledge I’ve made the following decisions and choices.

·          I take supplements and vitamins that strengthen the immune system, and try to incorporate all the fruits and vegetables that provide benefit to the immune system in my diet.

·          I avoid all shopping, eating out, mixing in crowds of people, and all the contact I can with things that are handled by many people, as much as possible because stray germs that would not ordinarily affect anyone because their immune system would routinely destroy them upon entering the body, could infect me with something that could kill me in short order.  That’s a tall order, and requires constant vigilance. 

·          I handle no money, I wash my hands so often that I think I’ll wash my skin away, at times.  When I am cooking I try to wash hands as I come in contact with cans, cartons, and other items from the supermarket even though I no longer go there myself, because many people handle these things. 

·          I am careful to carefully clean all fresh produce, and my hands (again) as I handle them.

·          I use sanitary hand wipes when I have to go to visit the doctor’s office, just about the only time I leave the house now.  The day is so long that I can’t avoid eating something out at some time, so Jim tries to buy where he can see that the personnel use hand covers (gloves) when they handle and package the food.  I’m supposed to avoid bakery goods that are handled by people a lot, and those in the open can be handled by everyone in the bakery or supermarket.  Even packaged goods hold germs on the packages, and how often do you think of grabbing a bag of chips or something, touch the bag that many hands have handled, open it and then eat those chips using the same fingers you’ve handled the package with?  It’s something I never even thought about prior to this, but which I have to consider now, and make other arrangements.

·          I have become housebound except for these excursions and simple drives on an afternoon.  Luckily, Jim loves to drive, and that helps.  This has been going on for more than three years now, most of the time.  Very little of that time has my immune system been able to function normally enough for me to do the things we all take for granted.

·          I try to keep all assaults on the immune system in my mind as my condition changes due to these outside influences, so I can be most ready to help it along when it needs it.

·          I’ve discovered that I also need to try to keep all this in perspective, as I found myself becoming quite paranoid about some things, regarding germs and contact with things handled by other people.  On my doctor visits as I have to register where many ill people sit, use the pens, touch the desks, touch the chairs… all of this can make you crazy if you let it!

And, just as I tried to not allow that paranoia to take over, I was told by a friend in the area that a woman in somewhat the same situation who had been avoiding much of the same things, succumbed to the lure of a visit to an art show she dearly wanted to see, and died less than 24 hours later of some stray infection she picked up!

So, I try to temper all this with my faith and the inner strength it can give me, knowing that the way is fraught with dangers everywhere that can overwhelm me if I let them, and try to keep our lives as normal as I can under the circumstances.  Jim is very understanding and helpful in this.

I hope you can use some of this information to help you understand some of the changes you will be facing in your particular case, even if they vary a great deal from mine.  Keep in mind that I would like to hear about the successes you have or have had with some of those things you’ve tried.  You can send email to me at the link below.  It is by the sharing of this type of information that we can help others find solutions to their own problems, and with there being so much about this illness that is still unknown, it is something that can be helpful to many.  I’ve had confirmation of that from any number of people.

Copyright © 2006 All rights reserved
James & Marcia Foley

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