One tumor is gone and another is just a sliver after 4 keytruda treatments
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Hi BillM,
This is tremendous news. Thank you for sharing it – made my day. Only a small percentage of our patients have the MSI-high mutation found in their genomic profiling, but some who have this have done very well with Keytruda. I hope you continue to feel better.
Take care, regards, Mary
Well, I have a new update!!!! My cancer is gone but I lost the left half of my liver to atrophy. Basically, the can’t get any dye in the left half for contrast. The tumor is still there but dead because the left hepatic artery is blocked. The two inch tumor is out of the mesentery and the lymph nodes and pancreas. My tumors were msi-h and responded exceptionally well to keytruda. Lucky to be alive!!!! Will be on maintenance for another year but only have to get infusions every 6 weeks. What a wild ride!
Hi Bill,
Thank you for the update. I hear you that you’d hoped for faster results, but continued shrinkage is a very positive outcome. So I will say congratulations and that I hope the good results continue. If at the end of your treatment period there is still active cancer, your doctors will continue to offer treatment, either the current one or something different — I don’t think you need to worry about that. My fingers are crossed that your treatment continues doing its good work.
Take care, regards, Mary
Update to where I am right now. Picture isn’t as rosy as I originally thought but I am doing well. My tumor is now a 4.5cm by 2.4 cm or a little under 2 inches by 1 inch. It shrinks by about 7 mm per cat scan which is about every 12 weeks. My main concern is the treatment ends in a year and at that rate, will still be around an inch by half an inch. It is also surrounding the left hepatic artery. My left lobe of the liver has also atrophied. Considering having surgery around 6 months before treatment is done so the keytruda can prevent and kill any cancer cells after surgery. I also survived the covid but that delayed my treatment 5 weeks. The good news is the I found out that the tumor had spread to the mesentery and the lymph nodes but my lymph nodes are back to normal and the mesentery tumor is almost undetectable on a cat scan.
BillM You are a living miracle just like Matt Riedy thank god you sought out an effective treatment ! Get strong and enjoy life every day !
Hi BillM,
Wow! What good news, thank you for posting your latest results. We have had several patients with genomic mutations that respond to Keytruda on this board reporting similar positive stories (for example, Matt Reidy and Momma Rose Wong, if you’d like to search for their stories). These mutations are not common for our patients, but a few do have them. Another encouragement that our patients have genomic testing.
Please keep us posted and fingers crossed that your next scan result is even better.
Regards, Mary
I was diagnosed with CC August of 2019. Been having issues and thought it was my gallbladder. Had one Y90 treatment and it reduced the tumor from a 4 inch diameter ball to a 3 inch long by 1 .5 inch diameter tumor. Since my doctor said I was going to die even if I had chemo, because it had spread into the lymph nodes, I decided I would not do chemo and accept my death. My doctor would not prescribe keytruda even though the tumor was DMMR/MSI-H. At the urging of a friend, I went to the Markie Cancer Center in Kentucky and the doctor said I was a prime candidate for Keytruda. For months, I had been having severe pain whenever I ate anything with fat in it. Basically, I had been living off of fruit, jello, and crackers. Campbell chicken noodle soup would cause me pain and I lost 40 pounds. Had no body fat to speak of. After the first Keytruda treatment, I had one last incident of pain 2 days later where I had to take 3 morphine pills in about an hour. After that, I haven’t had pain since. One of my tumors was supposed to just be a hemangioma and the other got the y90 treatment. I had a baseline CT scan in March. After 4 treatments and right before my 5th treatment, I had another CT scan this Monday. What a difference. One tumor was basically gone and there were just a couple of spots where the tumor had been. The other was just a sliver of its former self. He said they were both greater than 50% reduced in size but it looked more like greater than 75% from the pictures he showed me. One was basically gone according to the Dr. I am hoping at this rate, it will be gone by the next CT scan.
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