It's Been a Long Time Comin'

The FDA will soon approve Ipilimumab for treating Stage IV melanoma. This great news makes me want to both cheer and weep. For a mercifully brief time in 2003, my docs suspected that Mr. Schwannoma was a big, honking, untreatable melanoma tumor. A Stage IV diagnosis would’ve been a sentence of certain and imminent death. My favorite band of melanoma specialists once described Stage IV melanoma (in a medical journal article published in 2008) as “uniformly fatal”. Yikes.

But today, thanks to research advances and promising new treatment drugs like Ipilimumab, that’s no longer necessarily the case and metastatic melanoma warriors have good reason to harbor hope that their disease just might become a manageable, chronic one. Still, the long, long journey towards finding anything approaching a “cure” for metastatic melanoma is far from finished. And melanoma continues to be an ‘unpopular’ cancer in terms of government and private funding. I know I’m tagging myself as a member of the Woodstock Generation, but on this first anniversary of my blog I just can’t think of a better way to put my sentiments to music than to borrow Crosby, Stills and Nash’s “Long Time Gone”…



It's been a long time comin'
It's goin' to be a Long Time Gone.
And it appears to be a long,
Appears to be a long,
Appears to be a long
Time, yes, a long, long, long ,long time before the dawn.

Turn, turn any corner.
Hear, you must hear what the doctors say.
You know there's research that's goin' on around here,
That surely, surely, surely will put this beast at bay.
And it appears to be a long,
Appears to be a long,
Appears to be a long
Time, yes, a long, long, long ,long time before the dawn.

Speak out, you got to speak out for more awareness,
You got to speak your mind,
If you care.
But don't no don't now try to get this cancer funded
If you do you had better wait to share.
`Cause it appears to be a long,
Appears to be a long,
Appears to be a long,
Time, such a long long long long time before the dawn.

It's been a long time comin'
It's goin' to be a long time gone.
But you know,
The darkest hour is always
Always just before the dawn.
And it appears to be a long, appears to be a long,
Appears to be a long
Time before the dawn.

For the record, I was still in high school in 1969 and praying for a high draft lottery number. And, by the way, please support the cause of melanoma treatment research at The University of Colorado Cancer Center-- UCCC's work is part of the reason new treatment drugs like Ipilimumab receive FDA approval.