[Oncology]: glioblastoma. The tragedy of Jeanne Friske

Hey.

Probably, there is no one among us who does not hear about the tragic history of Jeanne Friske.

As the saying goes, everything is purchased for money, except for health. And in the situation with the disease of the famous singer and actress this statement is fair.

As soon as it became known that Jeanne has brain cancer, immediately people who are not indifferent to her creativity have raised money for expensive treatment. In a short period of time, an amount of several hundred thousand dollars was prepared, an investigation of which has been spent so far. But cancer is a terrible disease, healing does not depend on the size of the wallet.

Jeanne left this world. The last years of her life were hard for her and her relatives. Friske suffered from glioblastoma of the brain.

Glioblastoma - malignant neoplasm of the brain, developing from a specialized type of cells: astrocytes. The peculiarity is that normally astrocytes are able to multiply. When degenerating into tumor cells, uncontrolled and uncontrolled growth takes place, capable of shortly destroying human life.

Who has this tumor?
The causes of this disease, as well as other tumors, are not fully understood. There are factors that lead to the appearance of tumors in the human body, but modern medicine can not talk about the exact cause of a malfunction in the cellular system.

Such factors include:

hereditary heredity
radiation
ionizing radiation
viruses
chemical agents, etc.
Glioblastoma can get a person suddenly, without provoking factors and without having similar diseases among close relatives. Most likely, only in the future we will receive an answer to the question that so concerned us: "Why and with whom does glioblastoma arise?".

Symptoms that signal a disease
At the initial stages of development, the tumor does not manifest itself. Having reached a certain size, they give "signals" about their presence.

Glyoblastoma early makes itself felt, as it is located in the brain, disrupting normal functioning. The frequent location of the tumor is the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. When the tumor process progresses, the brain tissue is squeezed, and the functions are broken or lost. When large tumor sizes are squeezed vital brain centers, for example, the respiratory center. There comes a stop of breathing and death.

The first symptoms can be frequent headaches, general weakness of the body, nausea. Relatives of Jeanne confess that recently she suffered headaches, was weak and slept a lot. Then came the period when she fell into a hibernation for 1-2 days.

In a patient with glioblastoma, memory disorders, changes in behavior, the appearance of seizures of epilepsy are noted. Symptomatology depends on the size and location of the tumor.

And was there a chance?
According to statistics with the diagnosis of "glioblastoma" survival is 2-3 months, if no treatment was applied. With early detection and adequate therapy, the life span of patients with glioblastoma is extended to 1-2 years.

Obviously, the doctors did everything possible to prolong the life of Jeanne Friske. After all, from the moment of detection of the tumor to the day when Jeanne stopped breathing, two years had passed. This is an incredibly long time, considering the diagnosis ...
How can medicine help today?
Complete recovery of glioblastoma until 2015, doctors could not achieve. This is due to the tumor's resistance to chemotherapy and radiation.

Lengthens the life of surgical treatment. But the operation is not possible in every case. Glyoblastoma increases, grows into healthy brain tissue, which makes it difficult to find the boundaries of the tumor and does not guarantee complete excision. It happens that the tumor is located in areas inaccessible to the surgeon or the size of education is so great that it is impossible to perform the operation without hitting vital centers.

Education Jeanne Friske was inoperable. From radiation and chemotherapy, the guarantees are minimal. What was left for the poor woman who wanted to live and clung desperately to every straw, in order to see the smile of her little son? She agreed to an experiment.

In the American clinic on Jeanne experienced an experimental medicine that prolonged her life, but for a short while ...

In 2015, in Israel, scientists created a medicine to treat glioblastoma based on nanoparticles. The experiments were carried out on laboratory mice and showed interesting results. The lifespan of these mice increased 2.5-fold compared with the control group.

It is to be hoped that in the near future a cure for cancer will be created, the lives of millions of people will become more valuable, and tears of loss will be shed much less often ...