Originally Posted by dawiyo
That’s just 39 chemo infusions. That doesn’t count the countless chemo pills in fact, here’s my full story in case anyone would like to hear.
Like I stated in the original post, I was diagnosed in Nov 2021. I thought I had appendicitis, but it turned out to be a massive 9” tumor surrounding my appendix and colon surrounding my appendix. After a colonoscopy, I was scheduled for surgery a week later. But the very next day, my appendix burst and all of that nastiness went into my colon and through a laceration from the colonoscopy, found its way into my abdomen. I went septic and had to be rushed from the ER at my local hospital to a much larger hospital that could handle that level of surgery. That night they did a right hemicolectomy and removed 1/3 of my colon.
The focus now shifted to treating the majority of the metastatic cancer in my liver. After I recovered from surgery, I did 8 rounds of FOLFOXIRI chemo to no avail, but no growth either. They said the chemo was doing more bad than good, so they had me do three Y-90 radiation treatments. This is where they go up through your groin and stick radioactive beads in the bloodstream near problems spots in the liver. I was then put on maintenance chemo pills for a couple of months, again with no improvement. I had a spleen ablation surgery to which I almost bled out internally the next day. That wasn't fun. I had also developed a wicked umbilical hernia from the surgery incision that has now grown to be around 14" in diameter and 5" protruding when it's angry haha. I’m still dealing with a lot of pain from that every day. At the same time, I also started developing A LOT of ascites in my abdomen. Growing cancer “sweats” fluid, which pools in the abdomen.
I had reached the end point of standard cancer treatments. My oncologist then told me there's pretty much nothing more they can do, except join a clinical trial, and luckily, he knew the top doc at a large clinical research center close to me. I started on a clinical trial that ended up reducing my "tumor burden" by 73%! During the trial, I had 15 paracentesis procedures to drain the ascites from my abdomen, and in total, I had 53.77 liters of fluid removed. My belly looks like I've been hit with birdshot a few times from all of the paracentesis pokes. However, after 5 months, my body started to resist the clinical trial chemo and the cancer had started to grow back. Leaving that trial was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do because it was helping so much. 73% is unheard of.
In order to keep the cancer at bay, I decided to go back on to the nasty kitchen sink chemo i have first went on after the surgery for what ended up being 10 rounds. And just two weeks ago, I got enrolled in another immunotherapy clinical trial at the same place as before. So far so good, but we’ll know for certain after a CT scan in 4 weeks.
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