QUESTION: Why can I not purchase sugarfree nicotine gum in any local store, but I can buy all I want via mail order?

Is there some logical reason for this?

There's probably not much demand for OTC, besides sugar free always has a substitute of sugar alcohols that may give one the runs.

The interesting thing though is I have actually bought CVS brand sugarfree nicotine gum from an eBay seller.  Like this...

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.Xcvs+sugarfree+nicotine.TRS0&_nkw=cvs+sugarfree+nicotine&_sacat=0

BUT,  no CVS store actually sells CVS sugarfree nicotine gum.  lol

And it's not because CVS stores don't sell any kind of nicotine gum. They're loaded with nicotine gum that has sugar in it.

Plus gum with sugar in it causes tooth decay.

Here's another question to ponder on,  ppaca.

I spotted this ad in a magazine while in the waiting room for the doctor.
I hope the text is big enough to be legible after I made it small enough to fit the forum post.
Take a look at the paragraph I've encircled with the red line.

First read everything in that paragraph EXCEPT the last sentence.
And then read the last sentence (the one which starts with "there was no difference....")  and tell me that sentence doesn't absolutely contradict everything that was written in that paragraph before it.

After reading 3 times I think you're right.

Salinsky wrote:From my reading, the ad with exception of the last sentence is describing mortality rates.

The last sentence is speaking to "length of time ... without ... tumors worsening".

I don't see a contradiction.

The whole efficacy of this drug being claimed by it's manufacturer is that it accomplishes just that. In the 50% of patients it works with (the other 50% don't benefit from it), it puts the cancer (tumors) in regression and does so for a length of time before they begin progressing again. And the claim is it stops the cancer from worsening for a LONGER period of time than does treatment with the chemotherapy drug.
That is what the entire paragraph is maintaining PRIOR to the last sentence.
"Progressing" and "worsening" are synonymous terms.

However, the last sentence turns right around and completely contradicts that.

It makes complete sense if one is talking about the efficacy of living two months longer.

I thought the "cancer worsening" is why cancer kills you.  But apparently this ad and Sal and Seabigot's interpretation of this ad is it's not the "cancer worsening" that kills you.
My head is now spinning.

We know your head is spinning......go to the trump thread or the 40th anniversary thread spinner.....open your eyes and your brain.......is two more months of misery at the end of a battle with cancer an effective drug.....please reading comprehension cannot be left to just Sal and I. Yes, there is some improvement, but NOT ENOUGH TO BE STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT, and eight weeks of life on average longer is not drug efficacy which is going to fall beyond a standard deviation or statistical significance.

By the way, seaoat, you have lung cancer and the new immunotherapy drugs work best with metastisized melanoma and lung cancer.
Why would this not be a suitable treatment for you too?

2seaoat wrote:We know your head is spinning......go to the trump thread or the 40th anniversary thread spinner.....open your eyes and your brain.......is two more months of misery at the end of a battle with cancer an effective drug.....please reading comprehension cannot be left to just Sal and I.  Yes, there is some improvement, but NOT ENOUGH TO BE STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT, and eight weeks of life on average longer is not drug efficacy which is going to fall beyond a standard deviation or statistical significance.

"Is two more months of misery at the end of a battle with cancer an effective drug?"

I have no earthly idea what in the world that is even trying to say.

Firstly, I have not experienced "misery" or any other negative as a result of taking the immunotherapy drugs. 50% of us taking these drugs experience zero adverse effects. And I get my last treatment tomorrow.

Secondly, I will not suffer any misery while this drug is working to put my cancer in regression. The misery will come AFTER the drug has run it's course (the cancer has become resistant to it). Then the cancer will begin progressing again and that's when I'll have the misery.

Thirdly,  when these drugs work they can possibly work for far longer than two months.
The medium amount of time it delays progression of the cancer is about 6 to 12 months.
However,  a small percentage of patients result in complete response for a much longer period.  There is one local patient with which these drugs have put his cancer in regression for three years and still counting.

I am F'd Bob, but it is slow. Jobs lasted 7.5 years from the first tumor to death, and I made it to 8.0 years from my first tumor. Four marble sized tumors in my lungs are going to be my demise with the five inch metastais on the liver.....just a matter of time....no cures.....no magic bullet, but slow.....so you take your blessings where you get them, and if my doctors think a trial will help, I will try it, but honestly the shots are letting me have good quality and I do not want to spit into the wind......to me two months at the end of the illness is a joke. Two months of quality life is another matter.

2seaoat wrote:Two months of quality life is another matter.

This tells me that you being a lung cancer patient really should be familiar with immunotherapy drugs and you aren't.   So lets take a short time out from all the arguing and debating and politics and race and elevator music and new mexican hamburger joints and all the rest of that trivia and discuss this thing that is really important to you and me.  I'll try to help familiarize you with it.

For the last hundred years,  we've been treating cancer with chemotherapy.
The chemical introduced into our bloodstream was designed to attack and kill the cancer cells and tumors.

But only a very few short years ago,  we discovered how to go about this in a completely different manner.
Whereas the chemotherapy drugs attack the cancer,  immunotherapy drugs do not.  Instead,  they do one of two things depending on the drug and it's common to use both kinds of drugs to accomplish both goals (the two types of drugs are even more effective when used together).

The goal of one drug, Ipilimumab (brand name Yervoy),  is to boost the body's own immune system.
The other drug is called either Opdivo (like in the ad and what I'm prescribed), or Keytruda (like Jimmy Carter was prescribed) depending on which pharma company makes it.  
Here's how that drug works.  Cancer is so insidious and so smart that it puts a layer of protein over the tumors which hides it from our body's immune system.  That second drug (called a "PD-1 inhibitor") acts to remove that mask from the tumors so the immune system will attack and kill them.

Yervoy was first approved for use in 2011.
Keytruda in 2014 and Opdivo in 2015.

The drugs have proven to be very effective in melanoma and lung cancer (and more recently with more kinds of different cancers).  So unless your doctors have told you your particular kind of lung cancer is not receptive to these immunotherapy drugs then you might want to bring them up with your doctors.

By the way, a little piece of trivia about something I wrote in that last post.

I made reference to the immunotherapy drug being a "PD-1 inhibitor". That is the actual medical term.
So what words do the P and D in the term PD refer to?
This you won't believe. They actually stand for "programmed death".
No I'm not shittin you. lol

Bob,

I know with the illness, things sometimes are not always easy to comprehend. Steve Jobs did not die of pancratic cancer, he died from endocrine cancer where his first endocrine tumor was on his pancreas. I am dying from endocrine cancer, and my first tumor was on my upper left lung lobe. Yes, it is cancer, the first tumor was in my lung, but it is endocrine cancer which is a systemic cancer driven by elevated hormones. I am completely familiar with the research, and four years ago I spoke how in mice studies in Sweden they were getting a 100% cure rate of endocrine tumors. They went to phase one studies, and are waiting to go to Baylor University for phase 2 studies, but as my doctor at Northwestern said, it appears we do better curing mice than men. I will not have enough time for a miracle, but living six months longer than Jobs just three years later is a miracle, and I have zero complaints or worries. When it is my time, I will leave this earth.....nothing more or less, and if sitting in a nursing home wheelchair at 94 is my goal......please slap me so I can snap out of it.

2seaoat wrote: if sitting in a nursing home wheelchair at 94 is my goal......please slap me so I can snap out of it.

If I'm somewhere within the normal category,  my prognosis puts me in a nursing home or hospice facility probably in about two to three years.

I have five lung nodules and they're located in both lungs.
Multiple nodules almost always means they're the beginnings of more melanoma tumors.  
I can expect those nodules to be dormant between now and about a year after the end of my treatments.  Since the treatments will last about six more months,  that gives me a year and a half of the cancer remaining in remission.
But that's when the cancer has created a resistance to the treatment drugs and the cancer starts progressing again.
Melanoma lung tumors double in size about every 3 months.  So about 2 1/2 years from now,  I can expect one or more of them to be about 2 inches in diameter.
It won't be long after that when I go to the hospital,  the nursing home or hospice and start experiencing that misery you spoke of.

But right now I'm still symptom free.  And that's even though I have two different kinds of cancer.    One, stage 4 metastatic melanoma.  And the other CLL (chronic lymphocytic leukemia), aka blood cancer.
In fact,  I have yet to experience any symptom whatsoever from either cancer, both of which were first diagnosed three years ago.  And WHILE the immunotherapy is working, it's not expected that I will experience any symptoms during that either.  
So I have a good year and half to two years to remain free of symptoms. And I'm living my life no differently than before.  Although with a whole lot more appreciation of what it is to have life.

So I have a good year and half to two years to remain free of symptoms. And I'm living my life no differently than before. Although with a whole lot more appreciation of what it is to have life.

And that is exactly why I mess with you......it is refreshing for me when people slam me and treat me like I am healthy......so I slam you knowing that elevated blood pressure and anger will keep you young, and I stimulate your brain(which has been damaged by elevator music)......and I have fun when I get whacked back.....pity parties are silly.....there are no guarantees in life.

At least we're lasting long past age 24 like happened to Duane "Racist Elevator Music" Allman.

But it wasn't cancer that got him. It was the same thing that got teo.