Almost 40 years ago I was diagnosed with osteo sarcoma, bone cancer, in my right ankle. Within six weeks, I had three surgeries, including having my right leg amputated below the knee, and started my first year of chemo. The oncologists threw everything they had at the disease. Adriamycin. Bleomycin. Cytoxan. Cisplatin. Dactinomycin. Methotrexate.
A few months after finishing chemo, I developed a persistent dry cough. The cancer had spread to my left lung.
But I was lucky. Because osteo sarcoma is just as likely to spread to the brain or liver, which would have been a death sentence at the time.
Without any established chemo protocols left, the doctors said my only option was to join an experimental clinical trial — a dosage study of an agent called Ifosfamide. I jumped at the chance.
The second year of chemo was far worse than the first. I was only able to keep food down for 2 weeks out of the month and ended the year weighing only 130 pounds.
A few months after finishing chemo I developed a persistent dry cough. The cancer was back.
The doctors said there was just one Hail Mary treatment option left. Perhaps the remaining cancer cells had taken up residence in my left lung. Removing the lung could be the cure.
It was. And I remained cancer free.
But I wasn’t free of cancer’s legacy. That clinical trial I joined was a dosage study. About 50 patients were assigned to one of three groups: high, medium and low dose. I learned much later (by finding the study paper online) that all the patients in the low-dose trial died from their cancers. All the patients in the high-dose study died of organ failure caused by the chemo. I was lucky. I was randomly assigned to the medium dose trial. Two of those patients survived.
But the chemo had damaged my kidneys and 12 years later my kidneys failed. Once again, I was lucky, my best friend – Bob Hanscom – volunteered to get tested to donate his kidney to me. We were a strong match. And Bob’s kidney is functioning in me 24 years later as well is it was on day one.
I’m riding my fourth PMC to celebrate four improbable decades of extra, lucky life.
