Finally Caught A Break

I had a CT scan today which confirmed what I was feeling, which is that my immunological treatment(Nevolumab/Opdivo), is working on my tumors. This is pretty amazing because we still don’t know what type of cancer I have, but the PD1 checkpoint inhibitor whose presence was found when my cancer’s DNA was sequenced, has been the key.

All the tumors I had on my mid-section (kidneys, lungs, pancreas, omentum, etc) are now smaller. The bad news is that in the meantime my cancer has spread to my T10 vertibrea. (It had also spread to my pelvis since I started chemo.) I will definitely stay on my immunological treatment and most hopefully the new presences will respond similarly as my existing tumors humors have. But overall I feel dramatically better. If you haven’t heard I’ve been feeling much stronger, enjoying a hearty appetite, gaining weight and staying busy working on projects.

I’m still deep in the woods, but I’m on a good path that’s heading n the right direction. 30% of people w Kidney Cancer were still alive 4–5 yrs later when taking Nevolumab/Opdivo and that data reflects the earliest users well before it received FDA approval in November of last year. I don’t think I’ll be stuck on this drug forever because I’m entirely confident scientists’ and researchers’ mastery of science will march on and an actual cure will become available to me.

I’m still posting a lot on Twitter as TedR.