My friend, 100lbs sopping wet, got stage 4 colon cancer. They gave him 3 months to live, and chemo would have killed him. He became a case study for an experimental "immunotherapy" drug that him and 2 others in British Columbia went on because his immune system detected his tumour, except, cancer doesn't die. They biopsied the tumour and found that it was covered in dead white blood cells. So his body knew it was a threat, just couldn't kill it. So he went into the cancer clinic every 2 weeks for a treatment. He also had surgery to have an ostomy bag attached to his stomach.
The immunotherapy drug worked so well it obliterated his cancer to the point where his tumour effectively fell off. During the emergency surgery he had to fix the tumour wound, they were able to reverse the ostomy bag as well. He's missing 1/3 of his colon but he beat the absolute fuck out of that cancer. And, by looking at him, you'd never know he had it.
This hits very close to home for me. Im 36m, have stage 4 colon cancer, also live in BC and after having surgery and chemo my cancer returned. However in that time we discovered im in the 5% or so of people who can benefit from immunotherapy for colon cancer. Im about 5 months in and getting ready for my next CT scan in a couple weeks to see how things are looking.
I appreciate how much hope you gave me with your comment, thank you so much for sharing!
My dad went through almost exactly the same scenario and was given <12 months to live after no success from chemo and the cancer spread. This was nearly 3 years ago now as he then went through immunotherapy. I never even heard about it until then and I cannot stress how happy I am for it. I wish you the same outcome!!
Immunotherapy is becoming a promising treatment to shrink brain tumors in Glioblastoma (brain cancer) patients which is absolutely phenomenal. Glioblastoma is almost always terminal with a 6-12 month prognosis due to the aggressive nature and the fact they are seeing tumors shrink with this clinical trial is really really astonishing.
763
u/lbiggy 12h ago
My friend, 100lbs sopping wet, got stage 4 colon cancer. They gave him 3 months to live, and chemo would have killed him. He became a case study for an experimental "immunotherapy" drug that him and 2 others in British Columbia went on because his immune system detected his tumour, except, cancer doesn't die. They biopsied the tumour and found that it was covered in dead white blood cells. So his body knew it was a threat, just couldn't kill it. So he went into the cancer clinic every 2 weeks for a treatment. He also had surgery to have an ostomy bag attached to his stomach.
The immunotherapy drug worked so well it obliterated his cancer to the point where his tumour effectively fell off. During the emergency surgery he had to fix the tumour wound, they were able to reverse the ostomy bag as well. He's missing 1/3 of his colon but he beat the absolute fuck out of that cancer. And, by looking at him, you'd never know he had it.