Healing From Within

My body has learned how to fight cancer.  

On Thursday, I received the news.  My CT scan showed that both lymph nodes that had been radiated had decreased in size.  But, the news that really thrilled everyone at Stanford was that even the tumors that were not radiated significantly decreased in size. The only explanation was that the study worked.  By combining immunotherapy with radiation, my immune system learned how to recognize cancer as a foreign body and killed it.  This is huge.   

Let me say it again…. This Is Huge.

Drs. Kohrt and Fisher, along with all of the wonderful support staff of nurses and coordinators, were joyous when they shared the news.   Dr. Fisher thanked me for making him famous.  Dr. Kohrt was grinning from ear to ear.  My girlfriend Shelley (who came with me to hold my hand in case of bad news) and I were crying.  Thursday was a day filled with a lot of hugs.  When I saw my radiation oncologist that night (coincidentally there was a colon cancer event at Stanford that evening), he was beside himself with joy.  He said that while they hoped that their theory would work, they had no idea if it would actually pan out.  They were making it up as they went along...this had never been done before on a colon cancer patient.  But, they guessed right.  He kept emphasizing that because we proved it could work, he would now be able to make the case for others to follow the same protocol.  He was so happy about how this will open up opportunities for so many others.   

I can breathe again.

So much of this journey has been about self-exploration.  Digging deep within to find strength to continue the battle, when it appeared hopeless.  As you all know, I’ve approached this cancer holistically – depending not only on the brilliance of my Stanford docs but also trying to do what I could to help my body succeed (acupuncture, Chinese herbs, changes in eating, yoga, speaking to spiritual leaders and healers of all kinds, visualization and so many other approaches).  But – what we’re doing now with my immune system is the ultimate in self-healing.  My body has just proved that it is capable of fighting cancer itself.  In an ideal world, we won't need to poison cancer (and the rest of the body) with chemotherapy and hope that if we throw enough toxins at it, it will kill the cancer for the long haul. That method hadn’t worked for me.  The chemo was never strong enough to have a lasting impact.  But we finally found something stronger than cancer – the immune system.    And now with a little help from Genentech, a patient's immune system can now heal the body itself.

So what’s next for me?  Every 3 weeks for the next several months I’ll continue to go to Stanford for my PDL-1 immunotherapy drug.  In 3 months I’ll get another CT scan.  They believe that we’ll see continued reductions in the size of the tumors because the radiation that I had last month will continue to break down the tumors and enable the immunotherapy to do its job.    The hope is that when we hit the one-year mark, all of the tumors will be gone.  We’ll then monitor me for the next couple of years to ensure that the tumors don’t grow.  We may end up adding more radiation.  We may end up adding more immunotherapy.  The beauty is that because we know that these both work on my tumors, they remain a part of our arsenal to use for as long as we want.

It is a time of much happiness in our household.  As Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month comes to an end, I am feeling grateful for the care that I have been blessed to have had over the past 5+ years that has brought me to this moment.  I look forward to the day when we will be celebrating the end of colorectal cancer.  And – after receiving the results from Thursday, I truly believe that day is not that far away….