Posted on May 5, 2017
“Ironic”
– as shown in the above pictured definition of “Ironic” from the
Urban Dictionary
– is a word that is often misused in contemporary life but when it comes to my “Cancer Life”, I think it is perfect. I do not think my Cancer Life is just “coincidental”…. And I certainly do NOT think my cancer life is “tragic”! But has it been, from the very beginning, a series of events that have been a “complete reverse (and practical mockery) of what was expected”? That, I think I can agree with!
But before going into that, first of all (and connected to my ironic Cancer Life) a medical plans update I know so many have been waiting for!
Medical Plans (as of today!)
As of today, I have experimental planes lined up on the taxi-way, not just in theory – but logistically lined up with what I believe are all components in place waiting for a “go signal” based upon medical ability but…
I need to be medically stabilized first
. My liver is truly a serious cause of concern. It is covered in tumors & it does not tolerate even a small break in treatment without growing into a situation where I have liver disease symptoms. In other words, while my liver is in this state, I literally do not have the time to explore non-fast-acting activity experimental meds (unless they are done on top of chemo/standard of care) – I am beholden to standard of care first…
There is a fantastic, FDA-approved technology called “Selective Internal Radiation Therapy (SIRT)” or in a more general way, also called “radioembolization”. I won’t go through all of the details (click on the link above for a good Wikipedia overview) but in basic-terms: it involves the injection of radioactive (Yttrium-90 (Y90)) microspheres in such a way that they get safely trapped within the liver, without threatening the rest of the body with radioactivity. While there – it is actually quite medically elegant – the radioactive microsphere (not that much larger than red blood cells) selectively target liver tumors over normal liver tissue and thus the radioactivity is designed to selectively kill the liver tumors currently threatening my Life.
This is the way to attack these life-threatening tumors as hard as possible, as quickly as medically possible.
In many patients, SIRT can produce dramatic therapeutic results, very quickly.
The procedure is just a day procedure done by an “Interventional Radiologist” (the same one who did my lung radiofrequency ablations almost two years ago!). The main issue is that they can only do half of the liver at a time. So I am set up to do the first half at the beginning of June and the second half as soon as it is medically safe to do so thereafter…
So then the big question becomes: How do I keep myself medically stable between now (& in-between) the two SIRT procedures in order to keep the disease under control enough for the procedures to be done/the liver tumors attacked? As much as is medically allowed, chemotherapy will be used – as much dosing as possible. Immunotherapy add-ons will be done on top of chemo, as much as medically possible.
There is a decent chance this will be successful but far from guaranteed…
Quite simply there is nothing that is faster acting than cytotoxic chemotherapy and right now the seriousness of my disease requires agents that are ~immediately acting, like chemo is on chemo-sensitive tumors.
For my pain causing lymph node back tumors, I have switched to a different pain medication that is doing a pretty good job of controlling my back pain for now, although I do require a lot of bed rest. I now have “SBRT radiosurgery” approved for the pain causing tumor if absolutely needed for quality of life but I am needing to make sure that the potential timing of any SBRT for the back pain doesn’t prevent SIRT on my liver from being done as quickly as possible! It is indeed a very complicated 2-front war…
I am truly trying to thread the treatment needle right now, my life depends on it…
One thing that is indeed ironic
– and something I now have full appreciation of – is that all of my cutting edge planning, knowledge & resources aside, no matter how much I do… at the end of the day, I am at the bidding of the cancer beast. That is something that I under-appreciated as I enjoyed a quite slow growing & indolent disease for so many years. The bidding of my beast is now saying that my life is in the hands of standard of care therapy (while my experimental treatment planes wait on the taxiway) until my liver is safe! But once that is done – these plans are all set to go!
Speaking of Ironies
My Cancer Life has indeed been an almost continuous list of ironies for years now… Something that I can’t help but think about on multiple levels, mental, emotional and spiritual. Is it all coincidence (making the use of the word “irony” inaccurate)? I don’t know… I often ponder this. But laying out what has happened over the past 5 years, both good & bad, certainly does lay the case that it has been a series of events that have been a “complete reverse (and practical mockery) of what was expected”!
Where to start? How about the beginning…
My mother died of surprise diagnosis pancreatic cancer when she was 55. To be safe… I planned on starting cancer surveillance 15-years prior when I was 40.
I was ironically metastatic with CRC already when I was 39…
I was then surprise diagnosed with early-onset CRC
on the exact same day
that I reached the pinnacle of my cancer-fighting professional career… the ASCO-2012 presentation of the Phase 1 Clinical Trial results of “LDK378” (now named ceretinib/Zykadia) a lung cancer drug which I had co-invented (and by chance had been the first chemist to synthesize in the lab).
