After 92 years since its discovery, its interesting there is still debate about how Ewings Sarcoma cells come about. One thing that there is no debate on is that the marker of Ewings Sarcoma is a chromosomal translocation. But that’s only the marker, the way to identify ES.  How does one get Ewings Sarcoma? Why do the chromosomes change places? We are only Miette’s parents and not biologists but we still have a theory as to how she came down with Ewings Sarcoma, which I will put myself out there and get to in a bit. First, here’s what I understand about Ewings Sarcoma; I’ll explain it how it makes sense in my uneducated and non-college degreed brain… from a high level.

Cancer at the 30,005 Foot Level

Every cell divides. When that cell divides and a new cell is made, the new cell becomes “something”; whether it be a bone cell, a lung cell, a skin cell, an intestine cell, etc. You get the point.  With Ewings Sarcoma, that “something cell” should either specifically become a fat cell or a bone cell, which happens probably a gazillion-mabillion-quardroupleseptupabigzillion times during a life span. There’s a problem when that cell doesn’t become “something”. With Ewings Sarcoma, the cell division takes place, a new cell emerges but that new cell does not develop… it remains in a primitive state. It doesn’t develop because somehow two chromosomes swap places and results in a “mutant” gene inside the new cell. That “mutated” cell never develops to become a legitimate healthy cell. Instead, it just becomes a useless cell that takes up space. “So big deal, a new cell takes up space, duh” you might say. Well, this useless cell is alive and is developed enough to divide itself. It divides and now there are two useless cells. Each of those useless cells divide again. Now there are 4 useless cells. Again, you get the point. Without interference, these useless cells will eventually become more in number than the normal cells and they won’t stop dividing. As far as I understand, they don’t “attack” or try to destroy a healthy cell, they just take up valuable real estate inside the body. Left unchecked, the Ewings Sarcoma will take over enough space to render an organ (such as a lung) useless – resulting in death. A lot of times this “taking over” spreads to a few parts of the body at once and accelerates – not leaving much time to get rid of these “useless” cells. These useless mutant cells can divide at a much faster rate than normal cells. I believe this faster rate is because of that mutated cell having a greater number of insulin receptors than a normal cell. According to my understanding, a cell needs at least insulin to survive.

A major problem with some cancers in general, is this new mutated cell looks like a healthy cell to the body’s immune system. The immune system is blind to the fact that this cell is dangerous. It’s a very strange arrangement; humans can see a difference with the eye (with some dye and a microscope) but the immune system cannot differentiate this “bad” cell. Makes me wonder what the immune system does need to see in order for it to attack.

How Did Miette Get Cancer?

Obviously this question is bigger than what this post is going to get into. When a parent is faced with news that their child has cancer, that question is asked internally about 5,281 or so times. So I will just speak on the physiological side of the question. What physiologically happened inside her body?

Its our belief that Miette’s Ewings Sarcoma came about from her encounter with a sidewalk curb. No, I’m not saying sidewalk curbs cause cancer. As she decided to pop a wheelie as a way to go from street to sidewalk (like every kid on a bike has done), she failed to get her timing down and ended up crashing and hitting her shin on the curb. This resulted in bone chips from her tibia. The bone chips eventually “died” and according to her body’s immune system, became just foreign objects. Typically, the body would eventually push these foreign objects out of the body… much like a bee stinger or sliver. Unfortunately, in Miette’s case, the bone chips were still underneath the sheathing that is around the bone. This sheathing is pretty tough stuff and the body could not eject the chips out through it. So the chips stayed.

Now, Miette’s immune system was in excellent condition and did exactly what it was supposed to do and that was to surround the foreign object, aka bone chips, and encase it so the foreign object could not attack the other parts of the body while the body worked to push the objects out. So, what we saw on the outside of Miette’s leg soon after her injury was just a bump. But on the inside, the body was surrounding the dead bone chips like a big army and saying with a Bronx accent, “Yo, you ain’t goin’ no wheyuh” (that’s translated as “you are not going anywhere”).

When a body surrounds what it thinks is bad stuff and starts working to destroy the bad stuff, that’s called inflammation. So inside her leg, all this “war” and “red alert” stuff was happening to that area.

Because her body could not get the bone chips out and because her immune system was in good shape, it created a very strong barrier around the chips. To us, in our theory, this is where the mutation started happening. This encasement prohibited the nutrients needed for any cells trapped inside this encasement. The good cells that were trapped inside this encased bubble divided, as they should, but the new cells did not have any nutrients to develop. Somewhere in that non-developing process, chromosomes were translocated (this is where we can’t explain, even in theory, how that happens). The new cells were left in an embryonic or primitive state, if you will… and they stayed in that state… and they divided. Not enough nutrients could get in, but no cell could get out. We also believe, this encasement prevented her cancer from becoming metastatic. On one hand the encasement caused the cancer, on the other hand it held it in check. Again, this is our just theory and obviously hasn’t been proved. Call us what you want but its the only theory that makes sense to us, including the blank stare of the experts when we asked them.

Root Canals and Cancer

I actually do have a point to all this. I recently read an article that stated 97% of terminal cancer patients had root canals. The article references a study done by Weston Price about the effects of leaving a dead tooth (after having a root canal) in your body. In summary, the article and study said leaving that dead tooth causes a lot of havoc in the body… including cancer.

So here’s where I’m going with this. I know teeth and bones are not the same thing, but teeth DO have bone in them. Essentially, what I’m reading is that a root canal leaves dead bone in the body. Hey, that sounds a lot like Miette’s situation! Only, in this case, we’re not talking tiny bone chips. A body can’t completely surround these dead bones because, well, its a tooth and it can’t fully encase it. But what it does cause is inflammation. Then, when infection sets in around the dead tooth, then the body attacks that infection and causes more inflammation. Who knows what is happening at the microbiological level inside the body: white blood cells attacking infections while also trying to fight off this enormous dead bone which was once a tooth. Those white blood cells die off while new reinforment cells come storming in. Normal cells that get caught up in and around all this “war” still divide as they should. However, when this division takes place, there are these new primitive cells that are in the midst of all this pandemonium … it sounds like utter confusion and a real bad place for a new cell to be, given their need for nutrients to fully develop. Maybe these primitive cells aren’t able to fully develop before they divide themselves?

None of this is in the article – this is all just my thinking. I could be out in left field. I have had a drink tonight as well (with that marvelous Hawaiian Pass-O-Guava juice – YUMMO). But then again, maybe cancer starts in an unhealthy section of the body. The article certainly has merit in regards to the amount of bacteria the body has to fight when it comes to root-canaled teeth. The article’s cancer connection is merely an association at this point and much weaker than the bacteria connection, but believable and interesting to me. My main point is, since most biologists have no clue what causes cancer (and especially Ewings Sarcoma), maybe they should research and investigate the possibility that cancer cells start from a compromised part of the body, even if its small or appears harmless. Why did chromosome 11 and 22 swap places in Miette’s genes? I’m not saying its because of a root canal. But the concept is the same.

If anything, the article provides support for our theory about how Miette’s cancer started and opened my eyes to the negative effects of root-canaled teeth. It makes complete sense as to the unwise decision to leave a foreign (to the body) object in the body.