Play this song while reading today’s update. It will help set the tone.

Progress!

I had the last of my radiation treatments this week…the last for a while at least. 

We have radiated what can be radiated, and it’s time to give my new medication a chance to work.

New medication?? Yes, that’s right. 

We have an answer! We have a mutation!

Even though the biopsy last week was a dude, the bloodwork provided the missing link. I officially have my mutation and plan moving forward….put your hands together for EGFR19!

OR not…we don’t want to encourage this thing to thrive any more than it already has. It’s time to show it the door.

So what exactly is the EGFR19 mutation? 

Let’s dive in!

In short, EGFR is a protein found on the surface of both healthy cells and cancer cells. When the protein is damaged because of a genetic mutation, it doesn’t perform the way it should, causing rapid cell growth and helping the cancer spread. So we still don’t know why this protein was damaged, or how, but it must have been something to do with the state of my body last summer/fall; there was just the right combination of environmental and stress factors to make this protein malfunction and start allowing the cancer to have it’s way with my bones.

So the 19 version is actually quite common, and that means is has been studied and there have been medications used to combat it for quite a while. What a relief. My enemy is known, named, and now can be combatted.

EGFR19 accounts for about 60% of lung cancer mutations and is the most common activating mutation in advanced non-small cell lung cancer – that is, people who don’t smoke.

I’m ok not being special here. I’m fine with having the run-of-the-mill lung cancer mutation. I don’t have to be special all the time!

And the medications! There are proven medications I can take. Whew.

Word on the street is that I’m going to start taking Osimertinib soon. We need to give my body a few days to process the last round of radiation, to soak up the chemo that is coming today, and then bam….hello Osimertinib!

I’m happily using lots of !! today. It seemed like an appropriate day to !! it up. 

The brand name for this drug is Tagrisso, and wow, do the drug companies take advantage of us cancer patients to get filfy rich off of our sickness. Just a bit of digging told me that taking this drug could cost somewhere like $17,000 a month for an annual cost of $210,000. WHAT?!?!?!?!🤯

Those are scary numbers. I can’t afford a month, much less a year of the stuff. Fingers crossed for insurance to come in. This is why cancer patients spend all of their savings and go bankrupt. Do the drug companies need to charge us $294.68 per pill? It’s criminal. 

Back to what it does. Osimertinib is a Tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), which means the drug will inhibit the EGFR signaling; in other words, it will slow or stop the growth of cancer cells.

This will be a once-a-day pill that comes with a whole slew of fun side effects, including diarrhea, rashs or dry skin (I’m going to need to be very careful in the sun, especially because the skin rash could look like acne with nasty pus-filled bumps). Oh joy. I might also have nail or hair changes, fatigue, appetite loss, and a cough or respiratory issues. But seriously, all in all, these side effects don’t seem too challenging.

Best of all? This drug can cross the blood-brain barrier, offering benefits in cases of brain metastases. That means it will probably work on the 27 tumors I have floating around in the fluid outside my brain. Hazzah!

So, if my body tolerates and responds to the drug, my survival rate could be as high as 88%! The median overall survival rate is 38.6 months…that’s over three years, which I guess is good? If I can milk the highest success rates out of this drug and do all the other things to stop or slow cancer like focus on exercise, diet, lifestyle, etc, than hopefully, I can live a somewhat normal life? 

I still have the case of the collapsing C7 to deal with, so that’s a wrench in my body’s recovery, but I’ll be seeing someone at the end of the month about that. My collar is due to come off in a few weeks and I’m already working on some neck strengthening exercises so that I can manage the floppy neck, and soon I might  be able to start driving again. Sweeeet. I know my meds will change quite a bit with the introduction of this new drug, and I hope I can come off most of them. 

What else? I need to focus on getting my strength back. I’m walking now, hope to walk a bit more each day, I need to build my muscles back, and I can’t wait to get back into yoga. It still might be a month or more to start doing yoga again because I’ll have to wait a while for the meds to work on the neck and spine and rib tumors. Actually I have no idea how much time any of this will take. I imagine there will be frequent testing to see how I’m responding. And I need to respond because right now I’m still having significant pain in my neck/back/ribs, and I know my bones are compromised. They will need to have a chance to heal before I get all twisty on the mat. 

So time. It sounds like I’m going to need to give my body time to knit itself back together and for the medication to have an effect on the cancer. I have time, though. I filed for disability this week, so that process has started, I have a ton of books to read, I have writing to write, I have some nice puzzles and other projects to work on, I have walking to do, I have friends like you to visit with, I have a birthday party to plan and get excited for, I have nintendo games to play and an endless amount of streaming TV and movie channels to watch. I have all the fun things that come to Bend in the year…hopefully I’ll be able to start interacting with the outside world more soon! 

So yeah, you all are up to date now.

I have my third chemo treatment today with one more on the books for the end of the month, then the new medication to take. 

I’m sooo ready. 

Lets do this thing.