It’s been a while since my last post. There hasn’t been of a
lot of new information to report. My scans continue to show no evidence of
active cancer and no evidence that I ever had cancer. I still get chemo every
other week and I get scans every other month.
When I was first diagnosed with cancer I was given three
options. I could do nothing at all and the oncologist said I had 2 to 3 months
to live. My second option was to take chemo and the oncologist said, if the
chemo was effective, I could probably live 12 months. He made it very clear to
me that there was no chemo regimen that would make this cancer go away. If the
chemo was effective, it would slow the spread of the cancer, giving me an
additional 9 to 10 months of life. The third option was to take the chemo and
be part of clinical study for a new drug that showed some promise in defeating
this cancer’s ability to resist chemo. Half of the participants in this study
would get the new study drug and half would get a placebo. I opted for the
clinical study. A statistician in Boston is the only one who knew which patients
were actually getting the study drug.
After about six months, when my esophagus had healed up on
its own and the tumors in my liver were gone, the oncologist started saying
that I must be getting the study drug. There is no chemo regimen that can
produce the results I was getting, so the doctor believed that I must be
getting the new drug.
This past November, we were told that the study was over.
The drug had not performed as expected and the drug company was not going to pursue
FDA approval of this drug. We were also informed that I had not been receiving the
study drug. I got the placebo, i.e., normal saline. I asked the doctor to what
he attributed my success. He said about 4% of the patients survive this cancer
and there must be something about my body that is different than most people,
putting me in that 4%. I replied that we believe it is prayer. We know that
many people have been praying for me.
God deserves all of the praise for my success at living
almost 16 months longer than the oncologist predicted. God deserves all of the
praise for removing all active cancer and healing the parts of my body that
were damaged by the cancer. I continue to receive maintenance chemo every other
week. The oncologist believes that the cancer still exists in my body at a
level that is undetectable by current technology. For now, we are going along
with his recommendation to continue with the chemo maintenance dose.
Since I am no longer in a clinical study, I can receive my
chemo anywhere. That means when we travel to Florida for extended times, I can
transfer my treatment down there and will no longer have to travel back to
Indiana for chemo. Next winter we plan on being in Florida for the entire
winter.
Thank you again for your prayers. We continue to pray that
one day, I will be free of the need for chemo. God is good.
