Hi,
I'm sorry to hear about your husband's recurrence. He is too young for this, but I'm sure his youth is in his favor.
When G/C fails, most oncologists (and MSK, I'm pretty sure) will recommend MVAC, a 4-chemo cocktail, which is the historical standard for advanced bladder cancer. These days cutting edge doctors are throwing an anti-angiogenesis drug in the mix, most often Avastin --although there are a number of other drugs in this class also being tried for kidney cancer. Avastin is approved for colon cancer. The trick is getting insurance to cover it for off-label use.
Since the drug is in clinical trials for blc (along with Gemzar/Cisplatin) it might be possible to get it off-label.
Hyperthermia is considered alternative and is hard to get in the US.
There are no 'proven' alternatives that work for advanced blc and studies up till this point all say more research is needed. It's been shown that diet can help prevent cancer but not cure it, also vitamins are best got from the foods instead of the pills according even to Dr. Lamm who invented a vitamin for bladder cancer (oncovite -
blcwebcafe.org/oncovite.asp
).
When you say you're aiming for alkaline pH, do you mean blood or urine?
Melatonin is an interesting alternative treatment, I wish there were more studies (or any studies) of its use in bladder cancer...it's been shown to be of use with breast cancer...as has Tamoxifen, also a hormonal modulator. Tamoxifen is being studied for advanced blc, there has been research out of Japan on the subject and it seems to have some usefulness.
When I have done research about cutting edge stuff I either use Pub Med or CAM
Pub MEd for alternatives:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=pubmed
nccam.nih.gov/camonpubmed/
("the complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) subset of PubMed").
I checked the NCI clinical trial database, typed in bladder cancer stage IV and saw a number of other chemos being tried and a few anti-angiogenesis drugs aside from Avastin. There's simply more data on MVAC than any other chemo cocktail...
I wish you and your husband all the best, and please keep up posted.
Wendy