Letter10

From Computer Tyme Support Wiki

Dear Friends and Family,

The time has come for my latest cancer report. As you might recall from 2 months ago I had designed my own cancer treatment protocol based on combining radiation with immunotherapy drugs with radiation to trigger an autoimmune response against the cancer known as the abscopal effect. On June 19th I got an infusion of ipilimumab and followed by 3 radiation treatments to partially irradiate my biggest tumor using a geometry to create an interface between live tumor and dead tumor and minimize exposure to normal tissue. 4 days after the treatment I got a fever the indicated an immune response and at that time I was nearly convinced I was cured. But needed to wait 2 months before I could get a PET scan to confirm.

Here's a link to my last letter explaining this in more detail: http://wiki.junkemailfilter.com/index.php/Letter8

So yesterday I got the PET scan and today I got a call from my oncologist about the results. The good news is that it's not growing. But he says the images are confusing and he's not quite sure what he is seeing. And he's going to have other people look at it and see if they can figure it out.

So - the good news is that nothing bad is happening right now and I'm probably good for possibly years, not months.

I did discuss the results and without going into a lot of technical details the bottom line is that I might have already cured my cancer and the details of that are still in progress. Or - I might have started an immune response and I have to repeat the process a few times and then it will be cured, and that's the most likely outcome. Or whatever is happening I'm still going to be around for some time. But no Nobel Prize yet. But I'm not going to die any time soon either. And other that repeating my June treatment I'm not on any chemo or other drugs that is going to impair my life.

So - this is good news.

In the next few week I will be working with my doctors to get a more detailed assessment but I'm doing procedures that have never been tried before and I'm the first one. I was hoping to get a definite result that this works because I have friends who have cancer who want to got to their doctor and ask for the same thing. And that's not going to happen yet. But I think at this point, and I might be wrong, that this procedure will work and that it is a breakthrough in the treatment of cancer. I think I have an abscopal effect in progress or a partial immune response that will become a complete cure if repeated a few times. And there is a number of indicators that support that it actually is working. Including that I'm still alive and I feel fine when 2/3rds of people who were diagnosed when I was diagnosed are already dead.

And - I have to say that I did not expect this outcome at all and I want to thank all of you who supported me through this. It's not over yet and I'm still somewhat in stunned disbelief, but it looks like it worked. And I think this is the beginning of many interesting adventures to come.

I also want to say that even if down the road this doesn't work for me this is a breakthrough in cancer treatment and can save a lot of lives. So I am look into for some publicity on this because other people with no other hope should be doing this. So if you know how to spread the word the time to do so has arrived. I'm ready to go out and save some lives.

Marc Perkel Random Genius Twitter: @mperkel