Yesterday we visited dr Zenda, the oncologist responsible for my Proton Beaming Therapy. It’s the regular checkup every 6 months. He is a gentle giant in his field and we shared the joy of Dr Honjo’s Nobel prize. He informed us smilingly that my miracle had made the department decide to treat all Melanoma stage VI patients, followed by Opdivo treatment. Until now they had only treated patients without metastasis. Yippie!
He went on to say that since the treatment was working, that the next phase of treatment had to be carefully considered. There is still no success reference which can be followed. Tomorrow I will visit dr Namikawa, the oncologist responsible for my Opdivo treatment, and I hope to hear a bit more about the actual healing progress in the detailed CT-scan report.
I was informed yesterday that my body cannot handle continuous Opdivo infusions for many years. Starting Opdivo again after treatment has ended may result in a different reaction in my body like acute organ failure. (Diabetes, Hepatitis etc). So there are 2 possible scenarios to end the treatment: reduce the amount of medicin per infusion, or increase the period between infusions. Tumors may start to grow again when the infusions are reduced to fast, so the progress of healing will continued to be monitored using CT-scans every 3 months.
Survival rate of Proton beaming is 1 in 2. Success ratio of Opdivo is 1 in 3. A new treatment is becoming available now in my hospital. It’s personalized gene mutation analysis, with targeted enzyme treatment for mutated genes. It looks very promising. Hope of full recovery is ever growing. It’s still a long and winding path on a narrow mountain ledge, but I can now see the green valleys on both sides.
I trust in providence and the protection of my God. Thank you for all the prayers, thoughts, wishes, words of support, sending dropjes with colleagues and all messages. It all helps me to stay flexible and resilient. It’s been 1.5 year since proton beaming, and more than a year of Opdivo infusions. As they say, I am living on borrowed time, and owe my life to Dr Honjo’s discovery.
