05/11/2024
Selling my trailer, among other personal belongings, to try to keep paying my bills. Until I can get that sold, to get a cushion of funds, I really need help financially. My link is:
https://gofund.me/4d8bd9d8
I’m not feeling well but am continuing to fight this beast called pancreatic cancer and yesterday I met with a clinical trials oncologist/scientist out of UCSD. I was impressed with his knowledge, positivity & patience. He didn’t rush me off the phone & never wavered in any of his answers to my copious questions. A definite bonus when interviewing oncologists! He’s liberal enough to allow me to take all of my current anti-cancer supplements right up until the actual infusion of Car-T cells. 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼 Plus he’s kinda easy on the eyes. 😊
Basically, I will qualify for the clinical trial that they are offering me but I do have to go on Olaparib which is a parb inhibitor for 2 months, in order to qualify for the Car-T therapy which is in phase 2. Olaparib is used to try to prevent the cancer from growing larger or spreading until I can get the Car-T cells infused into my body. If tumors are over 4 cm it does not work well. Mine were close to 2 cm in April. This Olaparib drug costs $20,000 per month. I will have to go to UCSD to have some of my white blood cells removed which are then sent away to a lab to be genetically infused with killer Car-T cells. This process takes about 3 weeks but we are starting the process soon so I don’t have to wait too long after the 2 months of Olaparib to get started on the trial. I will be in the hospital for a week getting 3 rounds of chemo as this is unfortunately a mandatory part of the clinical trial. Then they infuse the cancer killing Car-T cells back into my body and we wait and watch my cancer biomarkers drop. The Car-T cells seek out all the cancer cells to destroy. It sounds impressive and this therapy has been very successful for liquid cancers such as lymphoma. I heard this therapy costs around $500,000 but doing it by clinical trial will not be a burden to me financially as the drug company pays that part. Not being able to drive or work for 8 weeks after the infusion will be another huge burden for me. 😔 I will need to stay in the San Diego area for one month during the therapy, close to the hospital in case of any bad reactions. I was told I will qualify for financial assistance with a close place to stay while I’m there.
This pancreatic cancer clinical trial is showing fairly decent success so far with the first pass of it getting patients into remission at a 60% rate. Better than 50%! The second time receiving Car-T cells is about an 83% success rate.
Please donate whatever you can to my GoFundMe. I am seriously in the fight of my life & I really need your help. Please also share on your LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media accounts. I am remaining positive & hopeful that I will beat this & thanks to your donations, my stress will be a lot less. Stress has been proven to contribute to the success or lack of success when going through cancer treatment.
Thank you in advance yo everyone considering donating & also THANK YOU to all who have donated. No dinariknnis too small & I appreciate them all. 🙏🏼💜
Shelley
