Only The Beginning

It’s been another happy week in a breakthrough year for advances in treatment for late stage melanoma. With the FDA’s approval of vemurafenib this week and its earlier approval of ipilimumab/Yervoy (also known in this blog as Huey), far more Stage IV melanoma patients will have access to these promising new drugs. And not just those patients able to get into a clinical trial or receive the drugs under FDA’s “compassionate use” rules. (Incidentally, vemurafenib’s brand name “Zelboraf” sounds like the name of a KGB agent in a bad James Bond flick, so I’ll stick with my previous nickname for the drug, Dewey). I hope and pray that the FDA’s approval of Huey and Dewey, the “melanoma twins” if you will, is only the beginning of a new era of continuing progress in advanced melanoma treatment.

Chicago’s “Beginnings” fits my sentiments so well that I barely had to change a word, so here’s a love song to the twins…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI5aD6m7ub0&feature=related


When I take you, it doesn't matter where cells are,
Or where they're hiding. They’re with you, that's all that matters.
Time passes much too quickly when we're together battling.
I wish I could sing it to you, oh no,
I wish I could sing it to you.
Mostly I'm silent.
Never think about words to say.
When I take you, I feel a thousand different feelings.
The color of chills all over my body.
And when I feel them, I quickly try to decide which one
I should try to put into words, oh no,
Try to put into words.
Mostly I'm silent.
Only the beginning of what I want to see forever.
Only the beginning. Only just the start.
I've got to get you savin’ my life.
Got to get you into me.
Only the beginning. Only just the start.