A Lung Cancer Patient’s Story of Hope – In His Own Words

A Lung Cancer Patient’s Story of Hope- In His Own Words
by Ben J. Coletti 

I was 71 when diagnosed with Stage IV Lung Cancer in February 2010. It is Stage IV because it has metastasized to my liver. I understand that it was inoperable and incurable. That is in the language of the doctors who treat cancer “within the box.” From that time on, I have undergone forty-one sessions of chemo treatments, aside from two and a half months of one pill a day of Tarceva from 30 June to 13 September 2011, and twenty scans of different types. In July 2011, I suffered a lot of side effects from Tarceva. I lost a lot of weight as I was not eating due to loss of appetite. One cannot possibly imagine the anxiety and stress that my wife and I went through with all these treatments. It seems that the world was crashing down on us.

My last chemo treatment in 2011 was on 18 October. The chemo drug was 40 mg of Navelbine which was administered to me every week. My oncologist told us that Navelbine was the last chemo drug as I was already treated with the different chemo drugs he knew for my illness.  “Do some traveling,” he said, in early October 2011. But before he could tell us to go home and prepare to die, as what is always said to a cancer patient who they think is near the end of the line, we opted for another kind of treatment.

By divine intervention, we found out about Dr. Robert Nagourney in Long Beach, California, who founded a laboratory called Rational Therapeutics (RT). They have a platform called Ex-Vivo Analysis – Programmed Cell Death (EVA-PCD), which exposes the live tumor cells of a patient to 8 – 16 drug combinations. The drug combination that can kill all the cancer cells will be administered to that particular cancer patient. Believing this is the most sensible way of finding out what chemo drugs can kill all cancer cells in an individual patient, we decided to simultaneously write Dr. Robert A. Nagourney in Long Beach, California, and my oncologist, to let them know of our interest in Dr. Nagourney’s EVA-PCD platform. Luckily, after reading all the information about RT and Dr. Nagourney, my doctor agreed to remain as my oncologist and continue treating me based on the chemo drug regimen from Dr. Nagourney as a result of the assay testing of my cancer cells. My doctor immediately scheduled for the core needle biopsy of my liver on 21 November 2011, to be able to obtain the required one gram of my live tumor cells. As soon as my surgeon released to us the specimen taken from my liver, we immediately sent this via overnight express mail to RT in Long Beach, California. The following morning, we received an email from Ms. Shari Burt of RT that they received the specimen and they are already processing it. After a week, we received the results and a copy was also sent to my oncologist. Apparently, they only received a total of 0.4 gram instead of one gram of my tumor cells, but they were still able to come up with the drug combination that could kill all my cancer cells, which was: Cisplatin plus Gemcitabine plus 5-FU.

On 06 December 2011, we saw my oncologist. We discussed the schedule of my treatment based on the recommended drug regimen of Dr. Nagourney. But I decided to defer it until after Christmas as I did not want to feel lousy during the holidays. Besides, I want to feel good when my younger brother who I did not see for almost five years, was coming to visit us on 08 December from Massachusetts. My doctor then scheduled a CT scan for my chest and abdomen on 30 December 2011, and he scheduled my chemo treatment on 03 January 2012.

On 03 January 2012, we saw my oncologist. He discussed with us the results of the scan which was really bad as all the tumors in the lungs and liver were becoming big and the liver has other new spots. Same day, I started my treatment of Cisplatin plus Gemcitabine plus 5-FU, the drug regimen recommended by Dr. Nagourney. After a week, my doctor gave me Gemcitabine alone. On 10 January 2012, we sent RT an update of my treatment. Immediately, Ms. Burt, sensing that the dosing of my treatment was too much, sent us the Nagourney “Triplet Treatment Regimen, as she says that “more is not better.” Ms. Burt added that they don’t want me to suffer more from the side effects as I was already heavily pre-treated before. We provided my oncologist of the said “Triplet Treatment Regimen” so on my next treatment which was on 24 January 2012, the dosage on Cisplatin was cut by almost half, but the rest remains the same.

All this time, except for the constant cough, I was eating good and feeling much better. I even went back to my walking when the weather permits. I did not lose my hair nor felt any side effects. On Friday, 10 February 2012, I had my twentieth scan. The next day, Saturday, we got the results. It was the most wonderful result that we want to see. All the tumors decreased in size. My wife and I were ecstatic. Thanks be to God!

On Monday, we wrote Update No. 2 to RT and we attached the scan results of 30 December 2011 and 10 February 2012, for proper comparison. Few minutes after we sent the update on email, the phone rang…it was Shari Burt of RT. She received our email and was very happy with the results!

We cannot thank enough Dr. Robert A. Nagourney, Ms. Shari C. Burt, and all the people at RT, my doctors and nurses and all my oncology team here in Corpus Christi for this noble job. We also would like to thank the hidden heroes who prayed for us and shared their invaluable information unselfishly for which reason we learned about Rational Therapeutics, especially our dear friend Mr. Greg Pawelski.

Yes, Hope is here!!!