Hey GMC peoples! It has been almost 2 1/2 years since I started this thread and way past due for an update on a story that has taken some unexpected and serious twists.
The vaping to get away from cigarettes ended up not working for me. Probably not long after my last post, I started to get some strange side effects from the vaping which included some pretty bad headaches as well as the top of my head and parts of my face feeling numb after hitting on the vaporizer so I stopped using it and picked up cigarettes again for a while and the headaches and numbing went away.
After that though I started feeling fatigued and had this nagging creeping crud kind of thing going on in my throat where I was hacking up flem. IDK maybe it was nicotine withdrawals that caused the headaches and numbness because I tried to ween off of it pretty fast.
The hacking up crud went on for at least a month I guess before I started seeing a bunch of different doctors starting about the beginning of 2018 to try to figure out what the problem was. First we tested for strep and things like that but came up empty and while I was trying to get that figured out I started getting some pretty severe acid reflux and heartburn so I went to see a specialist about that.
After doing a barium swallow x-ray, the doctor stated that he saw some nodes that were suspicious and suggested that I allow him to do an upper endoscope and biopsy.
All of that came back clean so I was back to trying to figure out my fatigue and hacking issue which actually turned into me loosing most of my voice and having no breath control to the point that I could only get a few words out before I had to take a deep breaths to continue speaking so I went to see an ENT doctor. They looked at my throat and determined that one of my vocal cords was paralyzed.
Before that I had a few visits with my General Practitioner and had some blood work and chest x-rays done and asked if he would refer my for a CT with contrast of my throat area to look for thyroid or any other throat issues.
I shared those with the ENT doctor who told me that he spotted something in the upper part of my chest that was barely and only partly in the range of the scan and discussed it with the Radiologist and together they thought it would be a good idea to do a full chest CT with contrast.
The results of that scan showed a mass in the upper part of my left lung as well as 2 swollen lymph nodes, all of which were in the same general area of my chest. One of the swollen lymph nodes is located near the aortic arch of my heart but that didn't seem to be an issue, however, there is a nerve that runs through that area called the Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve. There are 2 actually but it is the left one I believe that was being pinched by the swollen lymph node which was causing the paralysis of one of my vocal cords.
The ENT doctor referred me to a Thoracic Surgeon that ordered a PET/CT scan and a biopsy of the mass in my lung and one of the lymph nodes. The biopsy came back as Adenocarcinoma (Non Small Cell Lung Cancer) and the PET scan showed that it was indeed active. I was then referred to a Radiation Oncologist and a Medical Oncologist and was finally diagnosed with stage III B Adenocarcinoma.
Normally cancer that has metastasized from the main tumor to other parts of the body would be Stage IV but since the lymph nodes that the cancer had spread to were pretty close together in the same area of my chest they called it stage III B which is basically just saying it is between stage III and IV. I finally got that diagnosis in July, almost 6 months after I started seeing all the different doctors.
My Radiation Oncologist said I needed to quit smoking right away because it would hinder the treatment so I got on the nicotine patch and quit right away. As of the end of July I have been smoke free for a year. I really had no choice at that point.
Treatment was to start right away but first I had to a an MRI of the brain to see if anything had spread to there. Fortunately that scan came back clean so I was prescribed 6 months of daily radiation treatments except weekends and 2 rounds of Chemotherapy. One on the first day of Radiation and another dose halfway through the radiation treatment 3 weeks in. After I finished that I started a years worth of Immunotherapy infusions every 2 weeks which are administered just like the Chemotherapy through a port in my chest that connect to the jugular vein in my neck which takes about an hour. My Medical Oncologist gave me a 20 to 25% chance of beating it with curing the cancer being the goal.
Every 3 months or so I had a CT scan to monitor the size of the tumor and lymph nodes to gauge progress. After The scan I had in February my chances of beating it went up to 75% because the main tumor was not visible anymore and only scar tissue was observed. I had another scan in June that showed that not only was the tumor not visible anymore , but the lymph nodes had returned to normal size.
This coming Wednesday on the 14th will be my final Immunotherapy infusion and 1 month later I will have another PET scan which will give a more conclusive look at the size, and more importantly the activity, or hopefully lack of activity that is going on. My doctors and I are very optimistic that my scans will come back clean and I will have beaten this thing.
It has been a long hard battle and unfortunately the side effects from all the treatments have left me unable to work for the most part for over a year now but once I am done with treatment and the more time goes by afterwards, I should start to loose the chronic fatigue and get my endurance and stamina back. I am looking forward to becoming active again so I can get back to work but also to get back on a stage as well, hopefully next summer which will leave me plenty of time this winter to woodshed, knock off some rust and get my chops back. Oh, and I also need to drop about 40 pounds that I have picked up in the last year from lack of proper exercise.
It shouldn't be a problem though once I can become fully active again.
A few words on Immunotherapy.
It is still a relatively new treatment for certain types of cancer. When I started it, it had only been approved for a few certain types of cancer for a couple years and for my specific type and stage of cancer it had only been approved for about 6 or 7 months. I believe it has been approved for even more types and stages of cancer since I started treatment.
The type of cancer that I was diagnosed with and maybe even all cancers, I am not exactly sure, release certain proteins or chemicals that mask it from our immune systems. The Immunotherapy drug, called Imfinzi in my case, blocks the release of those proteins which basically unmasks the cancer cells so that our own immune systems can identify it as a threat and attack it. The ongoing study of the results of this treatment have been very promising and largely successful with this drug and another drug called Keytruda.
So, kicking the habit turned out to be quite a bit of a different story than it started out as.
If any of you reading this are smokers, do whatever you can to quit as soon as possible. I smoked a pack to a pack and a half a day for about 35 years and this is where it got me. It almost killed me and I guess it still could but I believe I will be one of the lucky ones and win my battle, but trust me, it is a battle that you don't want to fight if you can avoid it.
I would be happy to answer any questions that I can about my battle.
Rock on!! Rich...
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This post has been edited by AK Rich: Aug 9 2019, 04:38 AM