Stage 4 about to get off chemo and transition to surgery/HAI Pump
In late December after having a colonoscopy and a battery of CT MRI scans. It was clear that I had over 35 lesions in my liver. I'm based out of Ottawa and the Ottawa Cancer clinic gave me roughly 2 years to live. I'm 48, Married with three kids. It was devastating to say the least.
If you check my profile, you'll see that I'm an engineer that designs lots of cool stuff. So that's the hat I put on when I got this news. I told myself the number One thing I need to do is understand what I have and try to get as much information as possible. I also researched lots of different supplements but I don't want to talk about those because I don't think they had a large effect on my outcome. But if you're interested in the stuff I took, please shoot me a line.
The first thing I did was fire my first oncologist. They told us their style of oncology is to be as reserved as possible and not try to do anything radical. This is exactly what we didn't want . They were dismissive with a lot of our questions about other treatments options and didn't want to offer us a second opinion in Toronto. They eventually relented and we got a second opinion which I'll speak to later. Our new oncologist is fabulous and has been extremely helpful working with us
We had a fair amount of other issues with the Ottawa hospital. It took them about 2 months to figure out I needed to be on chemo which is a long time in the Cancer world. The surgeon we spoke to also was misinformed with a lot of the newer technologies.
This next thing we did is we got the foundation one testing on the primary site biopsy. It was about $2,000 Canadian but was well worth it. It basically stated I had a KRas mutation. This became very helpful in understanding the future response I would see under systemic chemo.
I've gone through 12 cycles of chemo so far and my last CT showed my liver is clean. The primary site is no longer visible on scans. It was actually fairly clear after four cycles with only a few small areas of hypodensity but no measurable lesions. My CEA dropped from over 10 to 2 as well.
I had a pretty rare ( in a good way) cancer in that I had only one mutation and TMB was very low. I was also MSS Stable. I have read that this type of cancer is highly susceptible to standard chemo because it lacks other mutations that inhibit cell death. The kras mutation is only a driver.
My second opinion in Toronto gave me a much more optimistic outlook. They told me the pump was a path to cure and this was even before the 4th cycle scans showing an almost complete response.
So I wait a few months to clear out the chemo and I get my colon removed, resection if needed,.and the pump. I'll wear the pump for about 6 months to a year and it doesn't have any of the side effects like standard chemo. It floods the liver only and will hopefully kill any remaining sleeper cells.
If everything goes well I will be in remission.
Anyway, I hope this is helpful to someone out there in a similar situation and feel free to reach out if you want someone to talk to.
